Clocks, and yes, you can still get so-called “analog” clocks, move the way they do because they move like sundials; basically, they are mechanical sundials. We can keep “clockwise,” or we can say “sundial-wise,” which is a meaningless (to people who do not use sundials), but unchanging reference.
Children are still taught to read analog clocks in school, because it helps them conceptualize time-- you know, how big a portion of a day two hours is. It will also help them later when they learn geometry.
Used to be you had a “phone” on the wall of your kitchen. Then you had a “phone” in your kitchen and maybe a “cellular phone” on your belt. Nowadays you just have a “phone” in your pocket, and a “landline” in your kitchen. If it’s still there at all.
Same with TV vs. “flatscreen TV,” which now would be “old-style CRT TV” vs. TV (pretty much assuming it is a flatscreen).
No, they are not new names for the same thing.
Aspergers is a specificly mild symptoms to do with communication ; autism is the spectrum which can be the total inability like the idiot savant in the movie Rainman (Cruise’s character name was Rainman, what Huffman called Raymond … Huffman played the autistic.)
What’s wrong with “Clockwise”? Analogue clocks and wristwatches are still extremely prevalent; I’d suggest the vast majority of watches out there are analogue. Digital watches were an '80s/early '90s thing for the most part; although obviously there’s still some popular ones around nowadays (like the Casio G-Shock series).
Also “Turning up” the volume is fine - heaps of audio devices still have dials on them which can be turned to increase or decrease the volume.
It doesn’t matter if devices still have dials on them or not. To try to apply some standard that “terms need to be changed” because they are no longer literal would be pointless–we’d be changing half the language. Language is by nature fundamentally figurative and representative. We not only would have to find a new word for the desktop of your computer screen, but also for the desks we sit at, because they are no longer lecterns or disks.
To expect all language to be somehow absolutely literal is to misunderstand it.
I don’t expect language to be literal, I just don’t understand why “these terms should be changed” is a thing when their reason for existing hasn’t changed? IE, analogue clocks are still prevalent and people still turn dials to change volume on things.
Right, that’s true–I was referring to the post that you were referring to, indirectly. IOW, even if there were no dials left, to abandon those words just for that reason would be contrary to how language has always worked.
Only in the Northern Hemisphere on horizontal sundials. Here, horizontal sundials move widdershins and even in the NH, there were many vertical sundials, which moved counterclockwise - some still survive (and some of the early continental clocks did, too).
“Snail mail” is the retronym. The others are new terms for new things. You bring up an interesting point: what does the bare, original word come to connote? With “mail,” I’m not sure – a poll on this would be interesting. With “guitar,” I have the feeling a small majority of folks first think “electric guitar,” but I could be wrong.
I always get confused when asked to “turn up” the air conditioner in the house. In my mind, if I turn up the air conditioning, I am increasing its power making the temperature cooler. It turns out that most people mean that they want the temperature “turned up.”
Your first definition is the one I would think of in the circumstances too, but I live in a state where winter isn’t really a thing so pretty much no-one ever wants their airconditioning to make things warmer.
If this was the intended meaning of the “bipolar” coinage, then I call it a misguided failure. Polarity, in all other contexts, indicates a definite orientation. Some kinds of polarities may reverse, but they are never “somewhere in between.”
