Language evolves.

Guess what! It's Friday, and it's time for another word.

Only this time, instead of a weird or archaic word you've probably never heard, it's a word that you still probably never heard, but will likely find very useful because it refers to something we deal with all the time. And we're going to keep on dealing with it, because it's an inevitable part of time passing and technology evolving.

The word?

Retronym.

If you're not familiar with retronym, take a moment to think about what it could mean. It ends with the suffix -nym, which means it's a kind of word.

And retro generally means old-school. So, an old-school word?

Actually, yes. That's just about it. But here's where it gets interesting and in my opinion, kind of fun.

A retronym is a new word for an old piece of technology. It becomes necessary because the "old" word now refers to a newer piece of technology.

The best example of this is the word landline.

If you were to just say the word "phone," a not-insignificant percentage of people would imagine a smartphone. In fact, the word phone has become so ingrained to mean one of those that even the word smartphone feels a bit antiquated.

But go back 25 years, and the word "phone" would evoke images like the one above. If you wanted to refer to a phone that wasn't a landline, you'd have to specify that it's a cell phone or mobile phone.

"Landline" is just one example of a retronym. Here are a few others:

Acoustic guitar. Until the electric guitar came around, acoustic ones were just called "guitars."

Dumbphone. Sticking with our phone theme, the advent of smartphones necessitated a new word for old-style cell phones. A few arose, like feature phone and brick phone, but the one I like best is dumbphone because of its contrast with smartphone.

Analog watch. Also known as a mechanical watch, these were just called "watches" until digital watches came onto the scene.

And maybe a few you hadn't thought of:

Milk Chocolate M&Ms were just called M&Ms until Peanut M&Ms became a thing in 1954.

Meeting somebody offline wasn't a thing you could do until it was possible to meet online.

And one that's always felt kind of awkward to me, the Playstation 1. Those used to just be called Playstations. But then with the PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5 and I guess PS6 eventually, they needed a way to refer to the first one.

The word retronym isn't new. It was coined by journalist and NPR president Frank Mankiewicz in 1980. But we get new retronyms all the time. Maybe when electric cars are more commonplace, we'll need one for cars that take gasoline, like gas cars. Or maybe non-VR video games will be called flat games. Or a non-Zoom meeting will become a flesh sesh or something.

Anyway, have a great weekend. Maybe we'll need a new name for those someday.