retronym

jargon A term invented to distinguish a subclass of things

from new members of the superclass, where the distinction was

previously not necessary, since the old subclass had been all

there was of the superclass.

For example, the retronyms "snail mail" and "paper mail"

were coined by those for who "mail" was likely to mean

electronic mail.

While the English language in general has a few retronyms

("whole milk", "snow skiing", "acoustic guitar"), hacker

jargon is necessarily (at points capriciously) rich in

retronyms, e.g. plaintext, natural language, impactprinter, eyeball search, biological virus.

[More examples?]

(2001-02-25)