anatopism

plural anatopisms

1. rareA thing that is out of its proper place; the geographic counterpart to anachronism.

   A war elephant described rampaging through Tenochtitlan in a novel about the Aztec Empire would be an anatopism.

   5 more examples

   […] and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two centuries; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism.

   1836: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq., M. A., ed, The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

   There is no anachronism in putting them together; it is a sort of anatopism rather; the painter has placed within our view two scenes which no mortal eye could have witnessed at the same time.

   1912, Augustus Hopkins Strong, Miscellanies

   It is a remarkable fact that, so far as I can judge, no case of local inconsistency, not a single anatopism, can be brought home to the Iliad.

   1921, John Anthony Scott, The Unity of Homer

   Much of the literature on the 'Japanese Miracle' (as well as on that vast anatopism, the transfer of Japanese recipes to Western countries) expatiates on […]

   1995, Tony Killick, The Flexible Economy: Causes and Consequences of the Adaptability of National Economies

   […] the semiotic mechanism of reorganizing space in this manner as an anatopism. Anatopism renders places such as Bali equivalents of other places […]

   2006, Lilie Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering