paleonymy

plural paleonymies

1. countableuncountableThe use of a preexisting word in a new context.

   Paleonymy stands in Takeuchi's text as a device to think such older words or concepts anew, therebv allowing them to effectively intervene in critical discourse.

   2005, Yoshimi Takeuchi, Richard Calichman, What is Modernity?: Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, →ISBN, page 8

   2 more examples

   A paleonymy proceeds by continuing to use an old, traditional name while making the name different from what it always was, because one or more of the predicates associated with that name is being rethought and reworked.

   2012, Ed Pluth, Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan's Theory of the Subject, →ISBN, page 19

   In his introduction, he begins with the problem of paleonymy, the summoning up of old names in new circumstances, writing self-consciously about the form in which his text will present itself.

   2016, Christy Wampole, Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor, →ISBN, page 208

2. countableuncountableThe connotations that a word carries due to its historical meaning or meanings.

   I should not have used this phrase because the word "violence" has a kind of paleonymy that suggests bad stuff.

   2007, Nermeen Shaikh, The present as history

   2 more examples

   I use the word "humanities," as the expression "English department," with a keen sense of the value of paleonymy.

   1992, James A. Berlin, Michael Vivion, Cultural Studies in the English Classroom, page 43

   It is my belief that unless the paleonymy of the language is felt in some rough historical or etymological way, the translator is unequal to her task.

   2005, Sandra Bermann, Michael Wood, Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, →ISBN, page 100