When Dylan went electric in 1965, he shocked every purist in the room. Not just the folk buffs, but wordsmiths too. Overnight, thanks to Bob’s apostasy, the humble guitar evolved, yet somehow remained a guitar. Other adopters preceded Dylan, of course, toying with adapters, but here was Mr Tambourine Man wiring up. The subsequent uproar drowned the amps, and baffled dictionaries.
Change in the world means change in the word-bank. Databases had to stipulate electric over acoustic guitars, just as keyboards mutated from Mozart to Moog, while gramophones demanded separate baskets for music – live versus recorded.
When Bob Dylan went electric the subsequent uproar drowned the amps, and baffled dictionaries.Credit:AP
Such shifts in technology shape English nonstop. Consider the pen, which began life as a goose quill. Penne in fact is Latin for feather. Over time, from habit or duty, we’ve clung to that initial fluff, preserving the quaint surname through multiple marriages, from fountain to cartridge pen, from ballpoint to felt-tip pen.
Just as history’s first movies were suddenly silent movies, thanks to talkies arriving. Likewise, whiz-bang computers needed clarifying from the flesh-and-blood variety of Hidden Figures. We know such terms as retronyms, newer labels for existing things that mark the deviation from the prototype.
