Soup the Comic Strip by Alun Clewe
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Comic strip for October 31 2023.
PANEL ONE: Erlak slumps on a bench with his head in his hands. Nizini sits beside him. ERLAK: I can't go back to the Dive Divine. I've made too big a fool of myself there. What else can go wrong? PANEL TWO: Close on Nizini NIZINI: Oh, yeah, there's nothing worse than having to worry that a bunch of drunk guys might think you're not always a paragon of self–possession. PANEL THREE: Nizini sits with her arms folded, as Erlak regards her in silence. PANEL FOUR: Nizini still has her arms folded. ERLAK: Was that sarcasm? NIZINI: Yeah. Why? PANEL FIVE: Nizini shrugs. ERLAK: Well, aren't you supposed to be the goddess of sincerity? NIZINI: I'm not on the clock.
October 31 2023

Okay, so I said way back in the commentary for the September 19 strip that I remembered during the strip's original run making an observation about something in a strip not necessarily being a good fit for the fantasy world, and coining a word for something like an anachronism but for worlds instead of times. It was this strip, and it was in reference to Nizini's mention of being "not on the clock" (which... yeah, is that really something someone would say in a preindustrial world like this?), and it wasn't during the strip's original run after all but in my earlier attempt to reboot the strip in 2009, and, well, here's what I said at the time:

There are two things about this strip that I'm not sure I like. (Well, I mean, aside from the artwork... but that goes without saying, right?)

First, there's the implication that being a god is something like a job; that there are times the gods are working, and that they get time off, according to some set schedule. This doesn't mesh up with the gods' behavior throughout the strip, and I'm not sure it was a good idea to introduce this concept just for the sake of a joke.

Secondly, what bothers me even more is the—well, "anachronism" more or less gets across what I want to say, but isn't quite the right word, because it's not specified what time the strip is set, relative to our own; it's set on a different world, which apparently doesn't have the technology of modern Earth (and which may operate according to completely different laws of physics so the technology of modern Earth isn't even possible), but it could very well be taking place at the current time (assuming it even makes sense to compare times between distinct cosmoi), or even in the future. Let's say "anachthonism", which is a word I just made up. The anachthonism of the reference to "on the clock". This phrase, of course, derives from the punch clocks used at many workplaces to keep track of employees' hours. (Or so I assume, though admittedly a quick web search failed to find any sources definitively confirming this.) This technology, while somewhat obsolescent in modern Earth, clearly doesn't exist in the nonindustrial world of Soup—and therefore Nizini shouldn't really be using the phrase. (Actually, this isn't even the first time this happened, really—when Erlak's champion referred in an earlier strip to "the job description", well, that's a phrase that pretty much came from modern employment techniques, too, I think.) I could justify it by claiming that what she actually said was something somewhat different, but it was "translated" to a modern colloquialism for effect; or that the phrase "on the clock" does indeed exist in the world of Soup but has a different origin than it has in our own world. But I'm still not totally comfortable with it.

(Of course, if one wanted to continue along those lines, one could argue that the characters shouldn't be speaking English to begin with—I actually have a response to that, but it's not worth going into here. And no, it's not that they're not really speaking English but their dialogue is presented "translated" for the readers' convenience"although that would be a valid explanation too. Well, not entirely, because there are a few strips that rely a bit upon wordplay, but anyway.)

That wasn't even the whole commentary for the day (though at the time I called the commentaries "news posts"); I went on for another couple of paragraphs about some glitches in the site code. Nor was this the end of the matter; I pontificated further about the matter in the next day's commentary/"news":

I am going to spend today's "news" post rambling about words.

See, in yesterday's "news", I coined a word, "anachthonism", for something that was associated with the wrong world (rather than, as an anachronism, the wrong time). Well, it then occurred to me to Google "anachthonism" to see if anyone had come up with the word before.

I found a single hit, from a discussion of Tolkien on a speculative fiction writing newsgroup, where a poster suggests it as a tentative answer to his wondering what "the 'place' version of anachronism... is".

"Anachorism," another poster supplies.

But a search on "anachorism" suggests it may not be the most appropriate word either. On another site, a blogger who for some reason calls himself "Wishydig" relates an exchange with an acquaintance who coined (or thought he coined) the word "anatopism" to mean "anachronism for a place". Wishydig, however, replies that "anachorism already works for that." Further points were brought up in favor of each word ("anatopism" turning out not only to already have been in use as a word, but to actually predate "anachorism"), Wishydig also bringing up the fact that the prefix "ana-" really isn't the appropriate one to use in any case, since it means "back" or "backward", and therefore "anachronism" would really mean not just in the wrong time, but specifically at too early a time (and of course similar objections would apply to "anachorism" and "anatopism"). He suggests "parachronism" or "metachronism", both of which are cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, as a better alternative (and a commenter also proposes "exochronism").

Now, let's deal first with the objection about the prefix. Yes, etymologically Wishydig may have a point. But, etymologically questionable or not, "anachronism" has been well-established in the English language with its current meaning, and while both "metachronism" and "parachronism" may have appeared earlier in the English language according to the OED, "anachronism" is certainly by far the most common term for the concept today, and it seems like overzealous prescriptivism to recommend its disuse because it doesn't match the usual meaning of the prefix. As for Wishydig's assertion that "anachronism" should really mean before the proper time, as it happens there's already a word for that, "prochronism". As well as one for after the proper time—"parachronism", ironically one of the words Wishydig suggests as a replacement for "anachronism". So, anyway, if not on etymological grounds then certainly on grounds of extensive precedential use, I think it's more than acceptable to continue using "anachronism" in its firmly established meaning as "of the wrong time". And therefore, by analogy, I think, in the final analysis, it's perfectly reasonable to use the same prefix to form similar words referring to the wrong place.

So which word would I choose to fit what I meant to say yesterday? Anachorism or anatopism? The answer is neither, really. I'm sticking with anachthonism. Sure, I can accept both "anachorism" and "anatopism" as valid words—but they don't have quite the shades of meaning I want. "Anachorism", marked by the OED as a nonce-word, apparently refers specifically to placement in the wrong country. "Anatopism" seems broader, one of its two OED citations referring to books misplaced on a shelf, and the other to "Geographical blunders". Neither, however, refers to what I was trying to refer to, namely placement in the wrong world. So there is still a gap. A gap that "anachthonism" can fill.

(As for the complaint of Wishydig's interlocutor (interscriptor?) that "anachronism" and "anachorism" are too much alike... personally, I kind of like the similarity among "anachronism", "anachorism", and "anachthonism", and the fact that all three start with the same five letters. Of course, that leaves "anatopism" the odd word out...)

So. There you go. A new word. Anachthonism—The erroneous association of an object or feature with a world to which it does not pertain; or an object or feature thus associated.

Hooray.

...And apparently this still wasn't the end of the matter; I was back on about it again the next day:

Just wanted to say that I think yesterday's "news" post may have come across as a little harsh toward "Wishydig", the blogger mentioned there. Particularly in referring to his "overzealous prescriptivism"; I've since read over more of his posts, and he is definitely not an overzealous prescriptivist. Moreover, I think I somewhat misrepresented him in saying that he recommended discontinuing the use of "anachronism" and replacing it with "metachronism" or "parachronism"—he did make the argument I cited about "ana-" not being an entirely appropriate prefix for that use, but he went on to say that he could see a justification for its use in "anachronism"; his suggestion of "meta-" and "para-" was for an analogous word referring to the wrong place. (Metachorism? Parachorism? Metatopism? Paratopism? Well, actually, a Google search shows the last two (but not the first two) already having been used, albeit very rarely; "Metatopism" appears in a handful of locations, but all but one result from an erroneous division of a Greek word (μετατοπισμένος); the one remaining is a paper about Oedipus that at first seems to be using it to mean a "geographical inconstistency"—which is essentially the meaning we are looking for—but then goes on to cryptically elaborate in a footnote that "[a]s the prefix 'meta-' connotes multiple meanings such as change, after, behind, among, with, and so on, metatopism involves much more than a simplified idea of substituting one place for another"—without ever specifying just what it is, then, that it does involve. (Interestingly, though, the footnote also raises Wishydig's point about the meaning of "ana-" vis-à-vis the word "anachronism". Possibly less interestingly, I think the sentence immediately preceding this one is the first time I have ever used the word "vis-à-vis") As for "paratopism", it has slightly more hits (but only slightly), being apparently an uncommon mathematical term for a conjugacy combined with an isotopism. (As for what exactly a conjugacy and an isotopism are... well, don't worry about it. This parenthetical comment (that is, the parenthetical comment that this one is nested within, or rather the parenthetical comment that the parenthetical comment that this one is nested within is nested within) has already become significantly longer than the rest of the paragraph.)) "Paratopism" (but none of the other three words) also appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, but as a nonce-word attested only in a single citation in 1851—where, however, it is explicitly advanced as a "word which will bear the same relation to place as anachronism does to time".)

Now, as it happens, I don't entirely agree with Wishydig that a word meaning "assigned to the wrong place" shouldn't use the prefix "ana-". Again, this argument is certainly etymologically defensible, but I think it's at least excusable to use that prefix for other similar words by analogy with the well-established "anachronism". Still, Wishydig makes a perfectly cogent argument, and it's not at all fair to accuse him of "overzealous prescriptivism".

As a matter of fact, as I said, I've been reading some of Wishydig's other posts, and there's a lot of good stuff there. If you're interested in language (which I am... heck, if I weren't, I wouldn't have a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary in the first place), Wishydig's blog offers a lot of illumination and entertainment—and, of course, there are links there to other blogs on the subject as well. I'd probably become a regular reader, and check out some of the other blogs he links to... if, you know, I didn't already have about ten thousand too many demands on my time. (One of which, of course, is getting the auto-update script working for the strip, which I still haven't gotten around to [wait, seriously, as of November I was still updating the strips manually in this reboot?]... not to mention redoing the hard-to-read fonts...) As it is, I may still drop by from time to time... [I didn't.]

And there, finally, I let the matter rest.

No, of course I didn't; I was still going on about it on November 3. Only in the last paragraph of a much longer commentary/"news" post, though; actually I think the rest of the post is kind of interesting too, but I won't quote it just yet because it has to do with strips that haven't appeared yet (in this relaunch). But just to wrap this matter up I'll quote that last paragraph:

Okay, now, back to the topic of the linguistic blogs, or rather to the topic that got me onto the topic of the linguistic blogs, I've been sort of reconsidering the argument to avoid "ana-", and thinking maybe I prefer "parachthonism" rather than "anachthonism" after all... So. Okay. Parachthonism—The erroneous association of an object or feature with a world to which it does not pertain; or an object or feature thus associated. Unless I change my mind again.

I have, incidentally, changed my mind again. For what it's worth, I think I'm back to preferring "anachthonism".

Not all my commentaries at the time were this long, but yeah, I guess I often did tend to blather on (maybe I still do, but maybe less, or maybe even more, or maybe exactly as much). I'm not going to repeat all of my commentaries/"news posts" from the strip's original run here (although I think on November 3 I may quote the rest of that day's post, because it's still sort of relevant), but if you really want to read them I guess you can do so in the old version of the site recorded in the Wayback Machine. I'm not saying I necessarily recommend it, though.