Human beings as retronyms, anyone?

The latest retronym — tobacco cigarette — would probably have been considered tautological had vape not been declared 2014’s word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries.

For the uninitiated, vape is what puffers of electronic (‘e’)-cigarettes do, and is expected by some to one day relegate its predecessor verb, smoke, to noun status, mainly applicable to discussions on ecology or cookery.

The fate of the telephone may be cited as a previous example of relegation, for as the stationary instrument was displaced as the primary mode of distance communication by the mobile phone, it was saddled with a plethora of prefixes from land-line to fixed line and even wire line.

Old timers may recall that once watches and clocks were just that; now they are either analog or digital. Mail got its first retronym when airmail relegated the other to ‘surface’ status; and email has virtually ensured its rival is snail mail.

Coffee was once just that too; now it is ‘regular’ (a favourite euphemism for ‘old’ along with ‘classic’) or ‘decaffeinated’. Even milk has not escaped, with dairy milk becoming an accepted retronym with the advent of almond, soy, coconut and other fashionably lacteous alternatives.

So, how long before humans find themselves to be the subject of a retronym, with bots and borgs offering more efficient services?