Misnomer

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A misnomer is a term which suggests an interpretation known not to be true. Such terms are sometimes considered incorrect on the assumption that the correct meaning of a term is that suggested by its form or origin. Some of the sources of misnomers are:

• An older name being retained as the thing named evolved (e.g., pencil lead, tin can, fixed income markets, mince meat pie, steamroller). This is essentially a metaphorical extension with the older item standing for anything filling its role. A particular example is transference of a well-known brand name into a generic sense. (Xerox for photo-copy)
• An older name being retained even in the face of newer information (e.g., Chinese checkers, Arabic numerals).
• A name being based on a similarity in a particular aspect (e.g. asteroids look like stars from Earth, the settled portions of Greenland are greener than the rest)
• A difference between popular and technical meanings of a term. For example a koala "bear" (see below) looks and acts much like bears, but from a zoologist's point of view they are quite distinct. Similarly, fireflies fly, ladybugs look and act like bugs and peanuts look and taste like nuts. The technical sense is often cited as the "correct" sense, but this is a matter of context.
• Ambiguity (e.g., a parkway is generally a road with park-like landscaping, not a place to park). Such a term may seem misleading at first blush.
• Association of a thing with a place other than one might assume. For example, Panama hats are made in Ecuador, but came to be associated with the building of the Panama Canal.
• Naming peculiar to the originator's world view.
• An unfamiliar name (generally foreign) or technical term being re-analyzed as something more familiar.

Contents 1 Older name retained 2 Similarity 3 Difference between common and technical meanings 4 Ambiguity 5 Association with place other than one might assume 6 Naming peculiar to the originator's world view 7 Reanalysis 8 Other

[edit] Older name retained

• Fibonacci numbers were originally described by Pingala.
• The May balls and May Bumps (boat race) at Cambridge University no longer take place in May but during "May Week" in June.
• Fixed income markets no longer deal predominantly with fixed (known) payments.
• Fullscreen is a term commonly used for home viewing releases (DVD, VHS, etc.) of theatrical films to differentiate from their widescreen counterpart. Yet, due to the rising popularity of 16:9 HDTV sets, it is, for the most part, the widescreen versions that are technically "fullscreen" (depending on their original aspect ratio.) Plus, most fullscreen versions of modern films, are in fact cut, zoomed, and panned versions of the original widescreen, so while the image fills a 4:3 screen, it is not in fact a "full" picture. The more correct term is "Pan and scan".
• Video filming even when talking about digital video
• The "lead" in pencils is made of graphite and clay, not lead, though the metal lead was originally used for the same purpose.
• Northwestern University is in northeastern Illinois, a midwestern state. Illinois was, however, part of the historical Northwest Territory.
• Tin foil is almost always made of aluminium, whereas tin cans made for the storage of food products are made from steel plated in a thin layer of tin. In both cases, tin was originally used for the same purpose.
• A windmill is a wind turbine whose mechanical output directly drives machinery, for example to mill grain or pump water. The earliest wind turbines were windmills. Most new, large wind turbines generate electricity, and thus are properly called wind generators, but many people call them "windmills."
• The designation Castillian Spanish refers to a standard dialect historically associated with Castille ^[1]
• Maxwell's equations were created by Oliver Heaviside not by James Clerk Maxwell.
• Clapham Junction is in Battersea (now part of Wandsworth), not Clapham (part of Lambeth); the borough boundaries have changed since the railway came.

[edit] Similarity

• An asteroid is not a star-like object as the name suggests, but a smaller object orbiting a star. The name refers to the appearance in a small telescope. A disc is not seen; it appears as a point of light, literally star-like.
• A Guinea pig is not a pig (it is also not from Guinea).
• A lead crystal is not a crystalline solid but an amorphous one—a glass.
• The Nintendo GameCube is not a cube because the sides are not all squares.
• The Hundred Years' War did not last for 100 years but 116. It was actually a series of separate campaigns and battles which continued for 116 years (1337 to 1453).
• The Blitz was the sustained bombing of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941. Although the word Blitz is a shortening of the German word blitzkrieg, meaning "lightning war," it was not an example of blitzkrieg but was an early example of strategic bombing.
• Catgut is made from sheep intestines.
• Podcasting is not limited to the iPod, nor does the technology involve any casting as the consumers pull audio data onto their audio players. However, like broadcasting, it is a way of distributing audio or visual data to large numbers of people.
• Heat lightning is actually lightning that is too far away for the thunder to be heard, but generally occurs during hot weather
• Sugar soap contains neither sugar nor soap.

[edit] Difference between common and technical meanings

• Apes are commonly referred to as monkeys.
• A coconut is not a nut, but a fruit.
• A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle, though it does fly.
• Koala bears are marsupials not closely related to the Ursid family of bears. The name "koala" is preferred in Australia, to which koalas are native.
• Percentages in baseball (such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage) are not given in the form of a percentage but as three place averages similar to a probability—which they are assumed to be able to predict on average that the batter with such an average will get on base.
• A peanut is not nut, but a legume.
• The East River is not a river, it is actually just the ocean water being backed up.
• San Francisco Bay is actually an estuary, not a bay.

[edit] Ambiguity

• There are two cities named Kansas City (both dating to the 1860s), one in Kansas and one in Missouri. Kansas City, Missouri is considerably larger and contains the metro area's downtown business district. Other major landmarks such as Kansas City International Airport lie in Missouri, and both the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals play there. As a result, the term "Kansas City" can generally be assumed to refer either to the city in Missouri or to the metro area as a whole, and generally not to Kansas City, Kansas specifically.
• British Isles is most commonly used to refer to constituent countries of the United Kingdom, British Crown Dependencies and Ireland although Ireland is not British.
• Single-space, space-and-a-half, double-spaced and triple-spaced text refers to the spacing between lines, not between words in a line.
• Middle East, Far East and Sub-Saharan Africa are geo-political terms which are ambigious.

[edit] Association with place other than one might assume

• Arabic numerals originated in India, though they came to be associated with the Arab world.
• Panama hats are made in Ecuador, but are associated with Panama as they were widely worn during construction of the Panama Canal.
• French fries did not originate in France. There are some doubts about their origin, but they most probably were invented in Belgium.
• Hollandaise sauce was created by the French after the manner of a Dutch sauce, but is not itself Dutch in origin.
• Several sports teams play at venues in the metro area they represent, but not in the city proper:
  • The Detroit Pistons play in Auburn Hills.
  • The Washington Redskins play in Landover, Maryland.
  • The New York Jets and New York Giants play in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
• Hamburgers are generally made from beef, not ham. "Hamburger" originally meant from Hamburg, Germany.

[edit] Naming peculiar to the originator's world view

• The tremolo arm on guitars is used to produce vibrato; not tremolo. Conversely, a vibrato unit produces tremolo, not vibrato. Both terms are due to electric guitar pioneer Leo Fender.
• Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America, even though people have been living in the Americas for thousands of years
• As European explorers mistook the Americas for India , the native peoples were called Indians. Similarly, the West Indies were so called after India.
• Newfoundland was considered newly found by those who so named it, but had first been inhabited at least 5,000 years before.
• Greenland is mostly Arctic and Iceland is mostly tundra (the settled portions of Greenland are green).
• Chinese checkers did not originate in China (or even Asia). The name was meant to sound more exotic to American ears^{[citation needed]}.
• India ink is made in China
• Anti-Semitism is prejudice against Jews, not all Semites.

[edit] Reanalysis

• English horn refers to an alto oboe with an angled mouthpiece. "English" simply mistranslates the French for "angled"; "horn" would seem to indicate a brass instrument rather than a woodwind.
• Despite its name, the Jerusalem artichoke has no relation to Jerusalem, and little to do with artichokes. Jerusalem derives from Girasole, the Italian word for sunflower, by folk etymology. The taste of the tuber of a Jerusalem artichoke merely resembles the taste of the leaves of the Globe Artichoke.
• Guinea pigs do not come from Guinea (they are also not pigs). The "Guinea" may be a re-analysis of "Guyana".
• In logic, begging the question is a type of fallacy occurring in deductive reasoning in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. However, more recently, "begs the question" has been used as a synonym for "raises the question".
• A quantum leap is properly an instantaneous change, which may be either large or small. In physics, it is the smallest possible changes that are of particular interest. In vernacular usage, however, the term is often taken to imply an abrupt large change.
• In common usage, a "steep" learning curve implies a difficult learning problem; but on the actual learning curve graph, a steep curve describes a rapid reduction in production cost per unit produced, indicating rapid (easy) learning by the production staff.

[edit] Other

• Dry cleaning immerses clothes in liquid solvents, but does not involve water.
• The Quad damage power-up on the game Quake III Arena only triples the damage.
• A radiator doesn't radiate; it works by convection.
• Scripting language is often used to describe the properties of some implementation of a programming language, or the original intent of the designer of the language, and not the language itself.
• Some band names seem to refer to the bandleader when they actually don't.
  • Darius Rucker from the band Hootie and the Blowfish is often referred to as "Hootie".
  • Debbie Harry from the band Blondie is often called "Blondie" (she is blond).
  • Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is often thought to be Jethro Tull.
  • The band Steely Dan has never featured a member named "Dan."
  • "Echo" is not a stage name for Echo and the Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch.
• Voltaire observed that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
• The US Federal Reserve Bank, is said^{[citation needed]} to be non-federalist, not a reserve, and not a bank.
• The Oktoberfest beer festival actually begins in September and ends in October.
• The distinction between organic farming and conventional farming is based on factors such as the use of certain pesticides and fertilizers. Both practices follow various conventions, and the chemicals forbidden in organic farming are generally organic in the technical sense.

A vacuum cleaner often gets called a Hoover, which is a brand name not an appliance.