3075: Anachronym Challenge

Anachronym Challenge

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Title text: I have to pay with paper money.

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Explanation

This explanation is incomplete: The table is incomplete. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Cueball is reading from a shopping list while shopping for groceries. The items on the list are all anachronyms. The names of the items indicate their material, but they are no longer made from that material.

Item	Actually made with	What the name says	Explanation
Tin Foil	Aluminum	Tin	A shiny foil.
Sponges	Polyester, Polyurethane	Marine invertebrates in the phylum Porifera, aka Sea sponges.	An item commonly used in the kitchen to soak up water.
Silverware	Stainless steel	Silver	Common eating device. However, these can be made of paper or plastics.
Linens	Cotton, Hemp, Polyester	Flax	Commonly in the form of sheets and blankets.
Clothes Iron	Aluminum, Stainless steel & plastics	Iron	Used as a tool to remove wrinkles in clothing by heating it up.
Ironing Board	Metal, fabric cover	Boards, planks	Flat surface for ironing clothes.
Reading Glasses	Optical plastics	Glass	Used to assist farsighted people with focusing on things up close.
9 Iron	Cast stainless steel, Carbon steel	Iron	Golf club
3 Wood	Titanium, Carbon fiber	Wood	Golf Club
Sidewalk Chalk	Calcium Sulfate (Gypsum)	Calcite chalk	Used for making marks on pavement or rocks. (e.g., For entertainment, for temporary signs or indicators).
Rubber Duck	Vinyl Plastics	Rubber or certain waterfowl	The family explanation seems likely here, as most adults do not necessarily enjoy rubber ducks.[citation needed]
Paper Money (Title text)	Cotton, Linen fibers (U.S. note), polypropylene, digital transfers	Papyrus	Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

Many of the objects listed on Cueball's shopping list can still be made with the materials that they are named after. Silverware can be made of sterling silver, especially in the cutlery of high-end establishments. Cleaning sponges made of sea sponges are expensive, but can be bought. Linens made from flax are still common. ^{[actual citation needed]} Some wood clubs are still made from wood, specifically persimmon. Banknotes of the Japanese yen are still made from plant fibers including wood pulp from E. chrysantha and abaca pulp. Moreover, steels are chemically made up of majority iron.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete: Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Cueball is looking at a phone in his hand while holding his other hand on the handle of a shopping cart. Above the shopping cart, an underlined header and a bullet list are shown:]

Shopping List

• Tin Foil
• Sponges
• Silverware
• Linens
• Iron & Ironing Board
• Reading Glasses
• 9 Iron and 3 Wood
• Sidewalk Chalk
• Rubber Duck

[Caption below the panel:]

I'm trying to do a shopping trip where I only buy stuff that's no longer made from the material it's named after.

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Discussion

Shouldn't "Anachronym" be "Anachronism"? The listed items aren't archaic acronyms. 162.158.63.83 17:30, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

No, "-nym" means name, so this is names that are outdated 104.23.190.60 17:36, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

(The OP) Ah, I see now. An anachronym is a term used in an anachronistic way (like tin foil which isn't made of tin anymore), where an anacronym is an word that started as an acronym but is now treated as a word (people no longer think of it as an acronym). Neither term being in common parlance, and being only one letter different, my search for a definition got them confused.172.70.35.94 00:20, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure why he should be paying with paper money. He can easily pay by credit card ... using virtual debit card on his phone. -- Hkmaly (talk) 17:46, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Paper money might not be made from paper anymore - at least, it isn't in NZ, where I live. 172.69.0.130 17:53, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I think “paper money” is about paper no longer being made from papyrus. US bank notes are printed on rag paper, which is indeed a kind of paper despite containing little or no wood pulp.--Seakingsoyuz (talk) 18:20, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Rag paper is not just "a kind of paper", it's the original kind of paper (papyrus is not paper in any usual sense, because it is not made from pulped fibers). When paper was invented in China, it was made from rag fibers, and it was still made like that when it was first produced in Europe.

I don't think 'paper money' should be designated as being made of paper here. Everyone knows that paper money doesn't feel or act like paper. It's incredibly hard to rip. DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 18:27, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Being Canadian, I thought the reference here was to what's described at Wikipedia as Polymer banknotes. --162.158.127.25 18:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

To reiterate the unsigned comment from someone above: linen and "rag paper" is in fact the original form of paper, which predates pulpwood paper by centuries. Paper was not made using tree pulpwood at all until the 19th-century development of industrial wood pulping processes for pulping wood and then making paper from that pulp. You've lived your entire life in the post-Industrial Revolution world and are used to thinking about it as "the way things have always been", when in fact it's enormously different from what the world was like for most of history!

Have you ever read Charles Dickens or other older authors and seen a mention of "rag-pickers"? Did you ever wonder for what purpose they were picking those rags? To sell them to be pulped and used to manufacture paper. --162.158.186.119 03:57, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

The "card" in credit card seems to come from Latin and Greek for a piece of paper or papyrus. So a credit card, now made of plastic, metal, semiconductors, etc. might be considered an anachronym. 162.158.41.95 19:20, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think anybody's made sense of or convincingly explained the title text. Paper money actually is basically made of paper. Maybe that's the joke and why it's in the title text. Is there anywhere teaching that paper money isn't made of paper? Maybe it used to be made of the same paper we use for writing on, like IOUs. 162.158.158.93 21:23, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Not in the UK ... the notes are not made with any version of paper now. (see also Canada & New Zealand above.) The Yeti (talk) 20:38, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I think I figured it out. The article focuses heavily on actual production, but Randall doesn't mean that the original products no longer exist, he means that they aren't what stores are selling. Thinking on this I realized that paper money is like that too -- it's no longer backed by gold or silver. I added a sentence to the article to say this using the concept "fake" like "imitation porcelain". 162.158.159.135 21:36, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

The same person (me) wrote both of these posts but the IP addresses are changed by the server. 162.158.158.16 21:40, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

It's not the server, it's the Cloudflare gateway. Don't worry about it. Even if it wasn't the Cloudflare gateway's IP that you were getting, there's a good chance that your actual IP, via your actual ISP, is not static enough to be guaranteed the same from one post to another. If you want to state your continuation (and not get a named account to do so...) just say "Hi, it's IP <1.2.3.4> again..." or whatever you need to do. But (as with me) you seem not to have a driving wish for continuity of self so... don't worry about it. Ok? 172.69.79.165 23:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

After thinking on this further I am no longer convinced by this explanation either. It's possible.162.158.158.16 21:40, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

He could pay with any form of contactless, given that pretty much everybody seems to touch whatever they're paying with against the sensor.172.70.162.58 13:24, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Adults who "enjoy" rubber ducks include programmers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging 172.71.95.27 18:40, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

The word money came from words that meant coin. The word coin evidently came from wedge shaped. Not quite anachronym, though somewhat anachronism. 162.158.41.95 19:11, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Surprised "lead pencil" didn't make the list 172.68.12.109 19:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Not quite the same category. The core of wooden pencils never contained lead, that was always a misnomer by people who didn't know it was actually carbon. ChaoticNeutralCzech (talk) 08:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I thought soft metals like lead did work for writing with though, functioning similarly to the graphite in a pencil but possibly needing a rougher surface like chalk does. I'm surprised the name isn't from actual use as I had informally learned it was. I think I tested it by writing with lead solder. In ancient Rome people would write on rougher slate, not sure what they used to write on the slate with though. 162.158.159.36 21:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

"Pencil lead" got that name because various people in ye olde days, pre-modern chemistry, erroneously thought it was indeed lead, since it looked sort of similar to tarnished lead (what lead looks like after exposed to air for a while; a "fresh" lead surface is shiny like most metals are "natively").

As for the ancient Roman world, the short-term writing medium of choice was wax tablets, made using beeswax in a wood frame. A wood stylus was used to inscribe into the wax. To erase it for reuse, you heated it and smoothed out the wax. Wood and bark slips were used at times as well where available. I'm not saying it never happened, but I'm not under the impression slate stone was a widespread writing material then. Stone is relatively labor-intensive to quarry and prepare (thus expensive) and of course heavy. They wrote stuff down in stone of course, but stuff they wanted to last, chiseled in, not ephemeral stuff. For "medium-term" stuff they had papyrus, clay tablets, leather, parchment. --162.158.186.119 03:57, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

See information like this. Slate was a very common material (my current house has a slate roof, and that was a relatively late 1930s building as far as slate-usage is concerned, the much more modern spate of rebuilds/retros/blending-ins excepted) and though the era of 'school slates' is long gone, it would have probably been one of the easiest and cheapest of (transient) writing materials available. To this day, if a pub landlord (or any other businessperson) feels that they can put your purchases on a buy-now-pay-later basis, the (perhaps informal, even notional/memorised) record can be described as being "on the slate" (i.e. bar-tab, 'on tick', etc), probably from the way that such minor debt-details were handled.

Chalk-on-slate is also a common 'pre-whiteboard' thing (blackboards. before later blacl/green-painted wood or enamelled steel or whatever coated fabric it is that they use for 'rolling' boards), and isn't uncommon to see as display-boards outside pubs/etc (either attached to the wall or as hinged A-style 'mini-easel' thing), or inside and handily next to the bar itself with the latest offers. Those that haven't gone for the non-stone equivalents. And I'm pretty sure that I had a chalk-on-slate child-size play-easel when I was very young (had a 'fake clock' on it, too, spinny hands to teach me the time, and on the otherside a pin-board of some kind), that my grandad made for me. Fairly certain the wooden bits were painted orange, as almost every wooden thing he made (that wasn't absolutely supposed to be a different colour, for what it actually represented) was orange. It's probably still somewhere in some family loft-space but (not that I'm reminded of it) I must now check. 162.158.74.68 15:00, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Duck Tape is no longer made from ducks! IIVQ (talk) 19:30, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

It Actually got its name from being made from "duck fabric," a kind of heavy very tightly woven cotton fabric. Then there was confusion by a brand putting a picture of a duck on the label, and people using it to join segments of heating ducts together, making people falsely think it was originally called "duct tape," with duck being a fanciful brand name. Originally though it was developed for the military in WW1 to seal ammunition boxes in a waterproof way, but due to widespread improvised uses by soldiers, post war they decided to market it to civilians.--172.71.255.102 17:11, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

What your thinking about is "fabric tape" or "gaffer's tape". What people call "duck tape" is actually called "duct tape," as in the tape you would use on air ducting. Many people misheard and dropped the final "t", and of course the Duck brand didn't help. --Mblumber (talk) 21:32, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

With both terms "duck tape" and "duct tape", there's valid (if false) etymologies. Being somewhat waterproof (the fabric being at least water-resistant and the adhesive being good even on damp surfaces) it being a "duck" material is fairly relatable. With it having a degree of air-tightness and some degree of heat-resistance, it's also trivially useful for sealing ambient-temperature ducting gaps (though you really need the metal-foil types for ducts with high or variable temperature airflows passing through them). 172.69.79.165 23:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Doing further research, the "duck" naming came first, due to it being made using duck fabric. Though there was some tape using it beforehand, it seems it first became widespread with something close to what we know today in WWII, intended for sealing ammunition boxes, but saw widespread other use by soldiers. Afterwards it was sold in hardware stores for household repairs, and made to be more heat tolerant to be good for use on heating ducts, also colored to match the tin typically used to make the ducts, and people started calling it "duct tape" in the 50's. Later, in the 70's, a company decided to market their brand by bringing back the original "duck" name, with a cartoon duck logo, though many people didn't realize that was the original name of that kind of tape, and thought they were just making a pun on "duct."--172.69.6.77 00:55, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Duck/duct is one of my go-to examples of folk etymology and misplaced language-snobbery. "Actually, it's..." type behaviour concerning "duct" tape has historically been in the direction of "duck is the misnomer, based on mishearing". And thats wrong. It was duck,but people thought it couldn't be duck because why the hell would it be duck, what the hell does duck mean when it's tape? OHHHH! It must be duct because people tape ducts with it. But no. It was duck. It became duct. It became duck again. It was all these things, because the only true arbiter of correct usage is common usage...but saying (knowingly, with an air of superiority) that it was originally duct is fundamentally incorrect. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 22:06, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

"digital money" shouldn't be listed as what "paper money" is actually made out of. Nobody would say "I'm paying with paper money" if they are paying with some digital currency. The anachronism is "paper money" being actually made of linen or whatever hi-tech fibers. 172.70.254.211 19:49, 11 April 2025 (UTC) anonymous user

Not even fibers. Sheet-polymers (with loads of complex embedded and pressed-in features) are becoming the new go-to for banknotes, in a number of countries. 172.68.205.135 23:24, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

My wife suggests that this is much easier if you are tech shopping: Apple, Mouse, Spam, Phish, Cookies.162.158.78.225 20:03, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

"Click mouse to accept cookie" meme - featuring rodent and confection. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/e6/7d/06e67d6ee5a2afa112bf548463e97125.jpg 172.70.35.94 00:20, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

That's not in the same category since computer mice were never made of actual mice^{[citation needed]}. Anyway, I'm sure there are some examples in tech: compressed air (gas duster) cans do not actually contain nitrogen or oxygen but a mixture of hydrocarbon gases that can be liquified at pressures obtainable in a cheap can to drastically increase the volume ratio, but I can imagine people might have used actual pressurized air containers for dusting at some point (though likely not commercially). ChaoticNeutralCzech (talk) 08:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Not sure why "sidewalk chalk" on there and who decides that calcium carbonate is allowed to be called chalk, but calcium sulphate is not. --108.162.216.196 05:25, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I came here wondering why it was on the list, but for a different reason: It's never been made from sidewalks. Yes, I actually needed to read the list to clear up the misconception. --162.158.127.25 18:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Because, other than the use we give it as "thing you write on blackboards with", chalk is originally a stone made of relatively loose calciulm carbonate (limestone mostly made from foraminifers), which is what was used to write on slate blackboards before we started making them out of pressed gypsum. --172.64.238.130

Calcium carbonate chalk is still produced (mostly for mathematicians). Search for "Hagoromo Fulltouch." 172.71.190.234 (talk) 15:47, 17 April 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

And as everyone knows, sidewalks are made of PEOPLE!!1 (YOU GOTTA TELL 'EM!) --172.70.207.171 02:41, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

You can still buy solid cast-iron irons. Although I doubt anyone actually uses them for smoothing clothes, more for decoration. SDSpivey (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If you can still buy _new_ ones update the article! People likely use the old ones in traditional communities though. 162.158.159.36 21:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

When I typed started typing "silverware made" into Google, it suggested "silverware real silver", which brought up a very ad-heavy results page. A few of them were re-selling vintage silverware, but most seemed to be offering "new" designs. I had to scroll down several pages before I found stuff that looked even like a catalog, rather than an ad for one particular possible purchase.

But since it seems like a competitive market, and I wasn't patient enough to look for an informational marketing page, I don't feel comfortable picking one (or several) particular ads as the citation.

Perhaps someone else does. Or perhaps a screenshot archived somewhere. JimJJewett (talk) 18:09, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Since when are ads considered reliable sources? --FaviFake (talk) 19:24, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Since they indicate what's popular, what's commonly seen and commonly used. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 09:38, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Steel

Stainless steel does contain Fe, so "iron" ain't that "wrong". 172.70.35.95 05:48, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

We have long made a distinction between "iron" and "steel", not to mention that, while stainless steel has about 1% carbon by weight (give or take: sometime more, sometimes less), since carbon is over 4 times lighter than iron, that makes about 4% (and up to 10%) of the atoms carbon, not to mention that, to be stainless, it has to either have a by weight composition of either over 10% chromium or over 8% nickel, which are almost the same weight as iron (a difference of around 5%, lower for chromium, higher for nickel). Given that the average stainless steel has a 18% by weight of chromium, adding that with the carbon means that only 3 out of 4 atoms are iron, and if you have copper and tin or copper and tin in that same ratio, it would long have surpassed the line to be called "bronze" or "brass", respectively. "Having iron atoms" is not the same as "made of iron", mainly when it originally was indeed made out of (wrought) iron. --188.114.111.245

99% is a way higher percentage than say, the amount of nickel in nickels ($0.05 coins): 25% (US) or 2% (Canadian). The latter might qualify for this list because it actually used to be made of near-pure nickel, while the US coin's composition never changed since the first (1866) version that became known as the "nickel". ChaoticNeutralCzech (talk) 11:48, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

So I guess that if you alloy gold with beryllium at a 1:1 atomic rate you can call the thing basically pure gold because beryllium, despite being 50% of the material, makes up only around 4% by weight, meaning that the 96% per weight gold has more gold in it (from your point of view) than stainless steel does iron (about 90% by weight).--188.114.111.47

Steel (stainless or otherwise) does not occur naturally. It has to be made. By humans. Out of iron. So in this case 'having iron atoms' DOES mean 'made of (as a synonym of 'from') iron'. 172.70.86.129 04:11, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If you can call an alloy by the name of its main metal component by weight, by the same token paper and plastic are the same thing, as they are both carbon-based polymers. It's splitting hairs.--188.114.111.47

Bronze contains mostly copper. So I assume you would call it copper, too. --162.158.130.67 11:15, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

In fact historians increasingly are adopting the term "copper alloy" to talk about all pre-industrial bronzes, brasses, and other alloys with copper as the dominant metal, because their compositions and alloying ingredients have varied all over the place throughout history—as has the terminology societies have used. --162.158.186.119 03:57, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

"Cutlery" specifically refers to metallic implements with a cutting edge. Knives, scissors, and swords are cutlery; Spoons and forks are not cutlery. Table knives, forks, and spoons, collectively are "flatware". 162.158.164.155 10:01, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I was really hoping to re-edit that element, anyway. The comic says "silverware" which can relate to cutlery/other food-implements or to the plates or candlesticks or even trophies. Someone assumed that meant cutlery(+dining implements in general). As well as other improvable writing about the assumption they went with. 172.70.58.49 22:58, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I assume the confusion comes from the respecive British and American terms for a collection of forks, knives, and spoons. British English calls these things "cutlery" even if they don't have a cutting edge. American English commonly refers to these as "silverware," especially when made with stainless steel, although I have also heard the term "plastic silverware" or "wooden silverware" when "flatware" would probably have been a more accurate generic term. 172.70.163.35 18:09, 13 April 2025 (UTC) (an American expat)

While its etymology indicates cutting edges, is "cutlery" actually used to mean "bladed items" anywhere? In UK English, it exclusively means eating irons, and is the standard, unremarkable, everyday term. In the places that don't refer to their knives, forks and spoons collectively as "cutlery", do they really use the word at all? Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 09:34, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Paper

I just want to point out that paper made from cotton fibers instead of wood pulp is still paper. You can buy it in the store. There are non-paper banknotes now, but not in the U.S., and I'd be surprised if polymer banknotes were ever called "paper money". LtPowers (talk) 12:35, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Be surprised. That's what they're usually called in Canada. --162.158.127.164 18:29, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

And anywhere with polymer bills. "Paper money" = bills. Still, it's true that cotton-linen paper is still paper, so is hemp paper and any other paper made from cellulose fibers (paper can be categorized by cellulose source, average fiber length, thickness, impurities and papermaking method). You can even make paper out of old clothes made from vegetable textiles (like blue jeans, cotton T-shirts or hemp pants). As a weird side note, there are non-cellulose papers, like silk paper, but they are made in the same way as regular paper (which is not how plymer bills are made, to my understanding)--188.114.111.245

Yeah, I've always heard of it as "paper money" --<b><i>xnerkcd</b></i> (talk) 07:10, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I have a different comment on the "money" section, namely that the thin. flat, wrinkleable stuff nowadays are not (at least not in the US) "promissory notes", and they haven't been since the Silver Certificates went out of circulation. No one makes any promises about them, other than that they are legal for paying debts. The stuff nowadays would be better called "fiat money", or perhaps someone else can offer a better term.

"Folding"? 172.70.58.50 20:50, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Ironing boards obviously came from use of irons. As irons aren't iron anymore, ironing board is also anachronistic. Quite often aluminium foil is refered to as 'silver foil', which is both not true (not made of silver), but also true (silver colour). And then there are people who still open 'tin cans' (but not). The Yeti (talk) 20:38, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

"Tin cans" always were "tinplate steel", which is, well, exactly what it says on the tin: steel, plated with tin. And according to the fount of truth, Wikipedia, tinplate still is used, particularly on cans with nastily reactive contents (e.g. very acidic); other cans use plastic liners or even enameled metal. (I don't know where, this was years and years ago, but I recall seeing a remark from someone with industry knowledge that the hardest thing to can (as in most hostile to the can and linings) was in fact rhubarb. --172.70.207.171 02:41, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
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