[Ads-l] more anachronyms

[James Landau]

The military has a number of what I believe qualify as anachronyms.
GUNPOWDER  The original gunpowder was a powdery mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal.  By the 17th Century it had been replaced by the safer and easier to handle "corned powder" (here "corned" means granulated).  When Oliver Cromwell said, "Fear God and keep your powder dry", he was being guilty of an anachronism.
By the late 19th Century the saltpeter-sulfur-charcoal propellant for bullets was being replaced by nitrocellulose preparations which unlike the traditional gunpowder generated little smoke.  They were referred to as "smokeless powders" although I believe they, like corned powder, was granulated.

SHRAPNEL   Named after its inventor Henry Shrapnel, according to Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate it is a "projectile that consists of a case provided with a powder charge and a large number of usu. lead balls and that is exploded in flight".  Nowadays "shrapnel" is used exclusively to mean "usually metal particles (sometimes called 'frag') resulting from an explosion."  

TOMMY GUN  Originally the Thompson sub-machine gun, "tommy gun" is sometimes used (although I believe the usage is dying out) to mean any automatic weapon (that is, a rifle or pistol or other gun that continues to fire projectiles as long as the trigger is pulled.)  True Tommy guns are still around, but manufacture ceased after World War II and nowadays it is more likely that someone wishing to fire a lot of bullets will use and assault rifle.      

BALL  as in "musketball" or "pistol ball".  a bullet.  the term originated when bullets were spherical.  Then in the 1846 Claude-Étienne Minié  invented a cylindro-conical projectile that could be fired accurated from a muzzle-loading rifle.  Despite its shape, it was called the "Minié  ball".  The term "ball" is still used occasionally in military literature for a non-spherical bullet, frequently as "ball ammunition".  Also "ball" is short for "cannonball", meaning a spherical artillery projectile (although artillery stopped using sperical ammunition by World War I).  "Cannonball" meaning something that moves fast (like an express train or high-speed semi), is an anachronym.

ROUND  usually for a cartridge, not a bullet, most commonly in the phrase "rounds of ammunition".  

AK-47   Used almost universally for anything that looks like the Vietnam War weapon, but the Soviet Union eventually replaced the original 7.62 mm 1947 weapon with first the AKM(also 7.62) and the AK-74 (5.56 mm)
                                                                                            COLLATERAL DAMAGE   Usually thought to be simply a US Armed Forces euphemism, but 
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Reports_of_Cases_Argued_and_Determined_i/4iIMAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=collateral+damage&pg=PA135&printsec=frontcover
Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Ohio IN BANKVolume IV  Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co 1873
page 162  "It is the value of the land and buildings only these plaintiffs seek to recover.  They do not seek to recover for any collateral damage." and several other uses which perhaps the lawyers on the this list can decypher, but it does not appear to mean human casualties.

STORMTROOPER  Originally German Sturmtruppen  was used to mean the specialist troopers used for "storming" Allied defenses during Ludendorff's attacks on the Western Front in 1918, but the term was taken over the Nazis and nowadays is used for politically organized good squads.  Incidentally, Ludendorff's stormtroopers were armed with the German equivalent of the Tommy gun.

GUARDHOUSE  the structure used by sentries and other guards, but civilians tend to use it to mean "stockade" which is where the guards move their prisoners.


DISMOUNTED DRILL   I believe the US Army stopped doing Mounted Drill before World War II, but "Dismounted drill" is still used for formation drill of infantry.


QUICKSTEP    Armies such as the British Redcoats performed their intricate battlefield maneuvers at a pace of 70 to 80 steps per minute.  Then the French Revolutionary armies took up marching on the battlefield at 120 steps per minute, a pace that is still known as "quckstep" 


GATLING GUN     Invented by Richard Gatling for the US Civil War and sporadically used during the rest of the 19th century.  It consisted of multiple barrels that rotated around a central pivot, with the barrel reaching firing position being the one fired while the rest of the barrels were being loaded by machinery.  By the 20th century "Gatling gun" was used only to refer to the obsolete weapon, replaced by single-barrel maching guns 
James Landau
jjjrlandau at netscape.com

PS: Ben Zimmer writes "The American Dialect Society, in its 35th annual words-of-the-year vote,selected rawdog as the Word of the Year for 2024. <snip>The verb "rawdog" is defined as "to undertake without usual protection,
preparation, or comfort." While the word originated as a vulgar slang term
referring to having sex without a condom, "rawdogging" ended up crossing
over into mainstream usage for a wide variety of activities."
Does this broadening of meaning mean that "rawdog" is a anachronym?  The world's first instant anachronym?








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