History NewerThanTheyThink / Terms

* The term "summit" in the sense of "high-level conference" was coined by Creator/WinstonChurchill in 1950, when he called for the West to have a "parley at the summit" with the Soviet Union.

* The word "[[TheFundamentalist fundamentalism]]," as a byword for religious fanaticism, dates only to 1920. Specifically, it derived from ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth]]'', a very influential set of essays defending conservative Protestantism and attacking various stripes of liberal theology, Catholicism, and secularism, published between 1910 and 1915. You wouldn't know this from how frequently it's applied to people living before this era. Before that, it just literally meant someone who stuck to the fundamentals of their belief system, more along the lines of "traditional", "orthodox", or just "not a heretic".

* The affirmative "OK" feels like it could be archaic English, [[https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/3iugvka but the earliest solid citation is a Boston newspaper from 1839]]. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okay The eymology is still uncertain.]] The variant "A-OK" was popularized by a NASA public affairs officer during the Mercury program (but seems to have originated earlier in Air Force circles).

* The term "boonies", meaning "a remote place", is [[https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=boonies first attested]] in 1964, apparently arising among US soldiers stationed in Vietnam and derived from "boondocks", which is itself derived from Tagalog.

* The use of the word "morph" as a verb [[https://www.etymonline.com/word/morph#etymonline_v_18374 dates]] only to 1987, being originally a shortening of "metamorphosis".

* "Scram", as in "get out!" could be taken for Old English, Colonial American English, or even American frontier slang, but it didn't even exist until TheRoaringTwenties, with a 1928 obituary for Jack Conway, a Broadway critic for ''Variety'', ascribing its invention to him (perhaps as a shortened version of the verb form of "scramble").[[note]]Conway also allegedly invented terms like "pushover" and "bimbo", but evidence points them being pre-existing words he picked up.[[/note]]

** The term [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit "two-spirit"]], referring to third-gender people in traditional Native American cultures, was coined in 1990.

* "Two-spirit", as a term for the concept of a gender-variant person in Native American cultures, was invented in 1990 at a gay and lesbian First Nations conference in Canada, to replace the established anthropological term "berdache", which was deemed offensive (it derived from a French slur for gays that itself came from a Persian word for "slave" or "captive").

* Obviously, any war called "the X Years War" could only be called that after it was over. In some cases, it is debatable if such a retroactively applied names are justified. Thus some historians see the Thirty Years War as four separate wars in quick succession (the Bohemian-Palatine War, the Danish-Lower Saxon War, the Swedish War and the French-Swedish War) and some early modern historians see the name "the Hundred Years War" as an attempt at one-upmanship by 19th century medieval historians, pointing to the fact that the periods of fighting were often very short and separated by longish periods of uneasy peace.

** Interestingly, the term "First World War" was coined in ''1914'' by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel. Although he used the term "First" to emphasize that this War is the first true global war, not because it is the first of multiple wars.

* The term SteamPunk was coined by K. W. Jeter in 1987. The term "cyberpunk" barely precedes it and is first attested in 1986.
* Although the term "political correctness" dates back at least to the 1970s, it didn't gain wide currency until the late 1980s, and was completely unknown in the UK until well into the 1990s. Anybody in the UK who says they used the term or were accused of it, in the 1980s, can safely be assumed to be just plain wrong; more likely the term actually used by, or against, them was "right on".

* The phrase "In God We Trust" first appeared on U.S. paper currency in 1957. It was mandatorily included on all US coins two years prior to this.

* The word "[[TheFundamentalist fundamentalism]]," as a byword for religious fanaticism, dates only to 1920. Specifically it derived from ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth]]'', a very influential set of essays defending conservative Protestantism and attacking various stripes of liberal theology, Catholicism and secularism, published between 1910 and 1915. You wouldn't know this from how frequently it's applied to people living before this era. Before that, it just literally meant someone who stuck to the fundamentals of their belief system, more along the lines of "traditional", "orthodox", or just "not a heretic".
* The term "high five" first appeared in print in 1980 and the gesture itself cannot be proven to exist before the 1970s, though its predecessor, the "low five", is recorded in African American communities at least as far back as [=WW2=].

* The term "pearl-clutching", meaning puritanical or prudish, does not appear in print prior to 1987; its use was popularized in a series of skits on ''Series/InLivingColor'' in the early 1990s.

* The use of the word "type" to mean "a kind of a particular thing" is first attested in 1843; before then, it referred strictly to movable type (i.e., letters used in a printing press.)

* The term "penny farthing" for a bicycle with one directly driven large wheel and one small, only came into use in the 1890s to mock the old-fashioned vehicles which had by then been superseded by the chain-driven bicycle we recognize today. In their heyday they were known as simply bicycles (there being no other practical two-wheeled self-propelled vehicle), and hobbyists prefer to use the proper retronym "ordinary" to refer to them (as opposed to modern "safety" bicycles).
* Although serial killers have existed for centuries, the term "serial killer" itself is first attested in 1981 to describe John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy. The use of "serial" to describe murders is slightly older, dating to the 1960s.

* The word "environment", in the ecological sense of "the natural world" (as opposed to i.e. cities and industry), is first recorded in 1956; its variants are more recent still, with "environmentalist" dating to 1970 and "environmentalism" to 1972.

* The word "blah", referring to meaningless or boring speech (as in "blah blah blah"), is first recorded in 1918.

* The word "menu" is first recorded in English in 1837.

* The term "unibrow" (i.e. eyebrows joined together by a bridge of hair in the middle) is first attested in 1988.

* The word "suicide" is first attested in the 1650s and is of English origin. Also, suicide was illegal everywhere in Europe until the 19th century.

* The expression "No way!" is first attested in 1968.
* The word "massage" is first recorded in English in 1874.

* The word "skank", referring to an unattractive or promiscuous woman, is first attested in 1965.
* "Poster child" dates to TheGreatDepression, but at that point it literally referred to the practice of using afflicted children in promotional campaigns for charities like the March of Dimes and Easter Seals. The broader metaphorical sense used to mean "a representative of an idea or cause" is much younger, first attested c. 1990.

* The word [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot "screenshot"]] is first attested in 1991. In fact, the use of the word "shot" to refer to a photograph, or camera angle dates only to 1958.

* Currently, the monarch of Ancient Egypt is only known to have been called "pharaoh" (which means "great house," i.e. court or palace) from the middle of the New Kingdom onward. This period excludes everything from the country's unification to the building of the great pyramids, the Hyksos' invasion, and even some of the famous earlier New Kingdom monarchs like Hatshepsut and Tutankhamun (which also makes it BrieferThanTheyThink--by more than half of the so-called Pharaonic period). Granted, the usage is still older than most countries that still exist today--but looking at it another way, Egypt was already an ancient country when it started. Prior to then, Egyptian monarchs had several different titles which were used in different situations (not unlike modern monarchs, in fact) but Egyptologists generally translate most of them as simply "king".

* The word "career" in the sense of "the course of one's professional life" is first attested in 1803.

* The word "prat" as British slang for a contemptible person is first attested in 1968.

* The word "shack" is first attested in 1878, an Americanism originally referring to a wooden hut. The word was first applied to houses in 1910.

* [[https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=deadpan "Deadpan"]] is first attested in 1928.
* The word "oink", for the sound a pig makes, first appears in print in 1917.

* The term "misogyny" has some isolated uses from the 17th century, but it wasn't common at all until the 1970s and the rise of second-wave feminism. Its SpearCounterpart, "misandry", is first attested in 1989.

* "Shrink" as a cheeky slang term for a psychiatrist appears to have been invented by Creator/ThomasPynchon for ''Literature/TheCryingOfLot49'' in 1966 (though he spelled it "pshrink"). It's obviously derived from the older "head shrinker" (heard in ''Film/RebelWithoutACause'' and ''Theatre/WestSideStory'', among other places).
* The term "low profile" is first attested in 1957, originally referring to automobile wheels. The wider sense of "not attracting attention" is from 1970, first in reference to the Nixon administration's policy of partial U.S. disengagement from burdensome commitments abroad.

* The term "overshoot" referring to any species' population exceeding its environment's carrying capacity was coined by ecologist and sociologist William R. Catton in 1980 for his book of the same name.

* The word "snide" in the sense of "sneering" or "cynical" is first [[https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=snide attested]] in 1928. Its original sense dates to 1859, being thieves' slang referring to counterfeit coins.

* "Intelligent design" is first attested in 1990, being a euphemism for creationism.

* Music/PaulSimon's 1980 film (and album) ''Film/OneTrickPony'' may well be the origin of "one-trick pony" as a dismissive term for someone or something that can only do one thing well. "Trick pony" by itself has a long history as a term for a horse used in a circus or live show. A 1905 publication of the Oregon Pioneer Association uses "one-trick-pony", but in context it clearly refers to a circus with one pony, not a pony with one trick ("the first one-tent, one-clown, one-trick-pony pioneer Oregon circus"). [[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/one-trick%20pony Merriam-Webster's]] goes with 1980 for its earliest citation.

* The phrase [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throw_under_the_bus "throw under the bus"]], meaning "to blame someone unfairly", is first attested in 1982. It remained obscure until being popularized by American news media during the 2008 US presidential election season.

* The phrase "[[DidIJustSayThatOutLoud said the quiet part out loud]]" dates to 1995, in the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E18AStarIsBurns A Star is Burns]]" of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. Its use in political discourse (referring to a public figure overtly expressing a controversial opinion that would normally be kept under wraps) dates to 2012.

* The words "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" are first attested in 1879; before then, the relevant terms were "deosil" or "sunwise" for clockwise, and "widdershins" for counterclockwise.

* The earliest definitive use of "jamboree" found so far is in a New York newspaper from 1868, and attempts to identify it as a loan word from another language (Hindi, Swahili, various Native American tongues, and even Gaelic have been suggested) have all failed. It only gained widespread use after the Boy Scouts began using it as a name for their gatherings in 1920.

* "{{Gaslighting}}", a word describing a form of psychological abuse in which the victim is manipulated into a distorted perception of reality, often by suggesting that they've misremembered something or that certain events didn't actually happen (even though they did), derives from the play ''Film/{{Gaslight}}'', which debuted in 1938, but has only become a commonplace term in the last couple of decades. There are citations for "gaslighting" dating back to TheFifties, and it became an informal term used by psychologists, with occasional references in pop culture, over the decades, but it gained currency in modern American political discourse via a 1998 ''New York Times'' column by Maureen Dowd, using it in reference to [[UsefulNotes/BillClinton Bill Clinton's]] provocations of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Its popularity was kickstarted during the 2016 presidential campaign of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, when it rapidly caught on in the mainstream press and was applied to a wide variety of different topics.

* The play ''Film/{{Gaslight}}'' debuted in 1938, but the term spawned from it, "{{gaslighting}}"--meaning to abuse someone psychologically by falsely accusing them of misremembering things--was first used circa 1998 by columnist Maureen Dowd in reference to [[UsefulNotes/BillClinton Bill Clinton's]] provocations of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Even then, the term was obscure until the 2016 presidential campaign of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, when it rapidly caught on in the mainstream press.

* The word "slob", as in an untidy person, sounds like Old English but only dates to 1887. It is derived from the word "slab", meaning a piece of muddy land.

* While Alison Bechdel first articulated the UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest in a 1985 ''ComicStrip/DykesToWatchOutFor'' strip, the term "Bechdel test" first [[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Bechdel%20Test appeared]] in 2007.

* The term "Anglosphere", referring the culture of English-speaking countries collectively, dates only to 1995.