The recency illusion is the belief or impression that a word or language usage is of recent origin when it is long-established. The term was coined by

Arnold Zwicky Arnold M. Zwicky (born September 6, 1940) is a perennial visiting professor of linguistics at Stanford University, and Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Ohio State University. Early life and education Zwicky was ...

, a linguist at Stanford University primarily interested in examples involving words, meanings, phrases, and grammatical constructions. However, use of the term is not restricted to linguistic phenomena: Zwicky has defined it simply as, "the belief that things ''you'' have noticed only recently are in fact recent". According to Zwicky, the illusion is caused by

selective attention Attentional control, colloquially referred to as concentration, refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentio ...

Examples

Linguistic items prone to the recency illusion include: * "

Singular they Singular ''they'', along with its inflected or derivative forms, ''them'', ''their'', ''theirs'' and ''themselves'' (or ''themself''), is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an unspecified antecedent, in sentenc ...

": the use of "they," "them," or "their" to reference a singular antecedent without specific

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

, as in "If George or Sally come by, give them the package." Although this usage is often cited as a modern invention, it is quite old, going back to the 14th century. * The phrase "between you and I" (rather than "between you and me"), often viewed today as a hypercorrection, which could also be found occasionally in Early Modern English. * The

intensifier In linguistics, an intensifier ( abbreviated ) is a lexical category (but ''not'' a traditional part of speech) for a modifier that makes no contribution to the propositional meaning of a clause but serves to enhance and give additional emotional ...

"really," as in "it was a really wonderful experience," and the moderating adverb "pretty," as in "it was a pretty exciting experience." Many people have the impression that these usages are somewhat

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and usage (language), linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of p ...

-like, and have developed relatively recently. They go back to at least the 18th century, and are commonly found in the works and letters of such writers as

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a m ...

. * "Literally" being used figuratively as an intensifier is often viewed as a recent change, but in fact usage dates back to the 1760s. * "Aks" as a production of

African American English African-American English (or AAE; also known as Black American English, or Black English in American linguistics) is the set of English sociolects spoken by most Black people in the United States and many in Canada; most commonly, it refers t ...

only. Use of "aks" in place of "ask" dates back to the works of

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

in Middle English, though typically in this context spelled "ax". * The word "recency" itself. It is commonly used in consumer marketing ("analyze the recency of customer visits") and many think it was coined for that purpose, but its first known use was in 1612.

Notes

A. ''Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage'' noted, "Although the lack of a common-gender third person pronoun has received much attention in recent years from those concerned with women's issues, the problem, as felt by writers, is much older" (1989, page 901).

Examples

See also

Notes

References

Further reading