Pre-Archaic Industrial Jargon

Larry Sheldon LarrySheldon at COX.NET
Mon Mar 12 15:39:06 UTC 2012


On 3/12/2012 10:07 AM, Ronald Butters wrote:

> An "album" of musical recordings downloaded to an iPod is still an =
> "album," even if it is not a thing made of vinyl. On the other hand, =
> referring to it as a "record" seems as anachronistic as it would be to =
> refer to a computer as a typewriter.

When I was young, an "album" was a book-like device whose pages were
pockets, of sorts depending on the specific designed purpose.

A photograph album contained pictures; a stamp album. stamps; a coin
album, coins.  A record album contained phonograph records, usually six
or eight, made of shellac or something else--dunno the name--not vinyl.

Even EP's in sets were packaged that way.  It was not until the LPs
where the equivalent of 6 or 8 disks could be cut on a single disc did
the single disc begin to be referred-to as an "album", probably by
marketing.

Opportunity to fork:  Do the words "disk" and "disc" have differing
meanings?  I think they do, but I don't know (yet) why.
--
Requiescas in pace o email           Two identifying characteristics
                                         of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio      Infallibility, and the ability to
                                         learn from their mistakes.
ICBM Data:  http://g.co/maps/e5gmy        (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list