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NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:58:48 -0600
From: Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Work akin to "anachronism"?
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:58:40 -0800
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[nonresponsive response omitted]
>
>"Alain Dekker" <abdekker@NOSPAM.fsmail.net> wrote in message
>news:498f69a2$1_1@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com...
>> I'm not sure how to ask this question, but you know how you watch a movie
>> about, say, the Ancient Eqyptians and one of the characters is wearing a
>> wristwatch. There's a word for that faux pas, which is, I think
>> "anachronism".
>>
>> My question is, say you were watching a movie about polar bears and they
>> showed you, or talked about, polar bears vaching and eating Emporer
>> penguins.
>>
>> Now polar bears are strictly North Pole and Emporer penguins are strictly
>> South Pole. This cannot happen.
>>
>> What is the term, if there is one, for this, please?
In case no one has given you a word, "anatopism" seems to be what you
want. I don't find it in a couple of American dictionaries, but it's
in the British _New Shorter Oxford_:
anatopism [...] n. rare. E19. [f. Gk ANA- + topos place + -ISM.]
A putting of a thing out of its proper place.
See also a Wikipedia article at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatopism>.
And
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anatopism>
There's a less helpful definition of "anatopism" in a medical
dictionary at <http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictionary?anatopism>:
anatopism medical dictionary
Failure to conform to the cultural pattern.
Origin: G. Ana, backward, + topos, place
--
Bob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English
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