A is the wrong name or term for something; a misleading name, often Idiomatic .
Some sources of misnomers include
- A word used in ignorance of the true meaning.
- An older name being retained as the thing named evolved (e.g., pencil lead, tin can, fixed income markets, mince meat pie, steamroller). This is essentially a Metaphorical Extension with the older item standing for anything filling its role.
- A name being based on a similarity in a particular aspect (e.g. asteroids look like stars from Earth, the settled portions of Greenland are greener than the rest)
- A difference between popular and technical meanings of a term. For example a koala "bear" looks and acts much like Ursid bears, but from a zoologist's point of view they are quite distinct. Similarly, fireflies fly, ladybugs look and act like bugs and peanuts look and taste like nuts. The technical sense is often cited as the "correct" sense, but this is a matter of context.
- An older name being retained even in the face of newer information (e.g., Chinese checkers, Arabic numerals).
- Ambiguity (e.g., a parkway is generally a road with park-like landscaping, not a place to park).
- Animal Crackers are not Crackers but Cookies .
- Anti-Semitism is prejudice against Jew s, not all Semite s.
- Arabic Numerals originated in India , not in the Arab world.
- Asteroid s are small Planet s, not Star -like objects as their name suggests.
- In Baseball , the statistics On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage are not Percentage s but Average s.
- In French, "C'est pas terrible!" translates directly as "It's not terrible!", but means "It's quite terrible!"
- Chinese Checkers is not Chinese (or even Asian) in origin.
- A Coconut is not a nut, but a dry fruit.
- Crystal ware Glass , like all glass, is not a Crystaline solid but an Amorphous one.
- The Democratic People's Republic Of Korea is neither a Democracy nor a Republic and the same for the People's Republic Of China and the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Laos )
- One parks on a Driveway and drives on a Parkway .
- Dry Cleaning often uses fluid such as Naphtha , making clothes wet.
- Fireflies are Beetles , not Flies , though they do fly.
- Fixed Income markets no longer deal predominately with fixed (known) payments.
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- The Fundamental Theorem Of Algebra , though a theorem of algebra, may be proved by various non-algebraic means. This leads to the notion that it is "really" a theorem of analysis (or topology, etc.) and not of algebra. The deeper point that disparate fields of mathematics are connected in non-obvious ways remains valid, but designating the "fundamental theorem of algebra" a misnomer is debatable.
- Greenland is mostly arctic and Iceland is mostly tundra.
- The Hundred Years' War was actually a series of separate campaigns and battles which continued for 116 years (1337 to 1453).
- Koala Bears are Marsupial s not closely related to the Ursid family of bears.
- The " Lead " in Pencil s is made of Graphite and Clay , not lead, though lead was originally used for the same purpose.
- Ladybirds , also known as ladybugs in American English, are neither Birds nor Bugs ; they are Beetle s.
- A College Lecturer in the University Of Oxford is paid to give Tutorial s, not lectures (most lectures are in fact given by College Tutor s).
- Newfoundland was considered newly found by those who so named it, but had first been inhabited at least 5,000 years before.
- Panama Hat s are from Ecuador , not Panama .
- Peanut s are Legume s, not Nut s.
- Podcasting neither relates to just the IPod , nor does the technology involve any casting as the consumers pull audio data onto their audio players.
- A Radiator doesn't radiate, it works by convection.
- Reduplication , a term in Linguistics actually stands for Duplication (and not fourfold repetition).
- Scripting Language is often used to describe the properties of some implementation of a Programming Language , or the original intent of the designer of the language, and not the language itself.
- Tin Cans made for beverages and Tin Foil are today almost always made of Aluminium , whereas Tin Cans made for the storage of food products are almost always made from steel covered in a thin layer of tin.
- The Tremolo Arm on guitars is used to produce vibrato; not tremolo. The correct term is "vibrato arm".
- Hot Dog s are not made out of Dog s.
- Buffalo Wings are not made from Buffalo meat. Although, the name could be construed to mean that they originated from Buffalo, New York , which they did.
- Several Sports teams' names are misnomers, including the Detroit Pistons ( Auburn Hills not Detroit ), the Los Angeles Angels who are from Anaheim , and the Washington Redskins who play in Landover, Maryland
- Laramie, Wyoming is not in Laramie County though there is such a county in Wyoming
- Kansas City is not exclusively in Kansas , but also in Missouri . See also Kansas City, Kansas
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