What are the terms for language anachronisms?

I had a conversation about a year ago with someone about anachronisms in language. We both felt that there were terms for these things, but could neither recall nor find (via web search) satisfying answers. This came up again recently in a different discussion in a Lemmy community, and it’s driving me a little nuts. Help me Linguistics-Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope.

So we have the term “skeumorphism,” which refers to oramental anachronism. I may be using “anachronism” incorrectly, but it’s the hammer I have. Skeumorphisms, in computers, refer to the graphical representations of things, but not the underlying concepts. There are similar linguistic anachronisms that I feel also have specific labels:

  • “disks” which are still in use, but are largely being replaced by solid-state, rectangular SSDs; but most people still call all persistent storage devices “disks.”
  • “film” to refer to movies, regardless of the media (increasingly digital and having nothing to do with film).
  • “rice” to refer to the process of fancifying something, like computer desktops
  • “desktops” to refer to computer GUI window managing interfaces
  • “files” and “folders” in computers

Are these all the same category of things? Is there a term for them?

  • @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    4•5 months ago

    IIRC “rice” comes from people who would mod Japanese imported cars. It has since been adopted by other hobby communities that like to “trick out” their stuff for aesthetic reasons. Particularly IME the Unix UI modding community.

    • LvxferreM
      5•5 months ago

      Thanks. I had to look at the full chain to know the changes that happened, it seems to be fairly complex:

      1. ⟨rice burner⟩ noun as “Japanese car”. Derogatory metaphor.
      2. → ⟨rice⟩ noun as “Japanese car”. Lexical change (clipping).
      3. → ⟨rice⟩ noun as “features associated with a Japanese car”. Semantic change (metonymy - the part by the whole).
      4. → ⟨rice⟩ verb as “to add to a car features associated with a Japanese car”. Derivation (verbification)
      5. → ⟨rice⟩ verb as “to add to a car features seen as fancy or unnecessary”. Semantic change (metonymy - referring to the parts by subjective attributes seen on them)
      6. → ⟨rice⟩ verb as “to add features seen as fancy or unnecessary”. Semantic change (widening - removing the restriction regarding cars)

      I’m not too sure on the chain, but it should be something like this.