Verboticism: Retirosaur

'Wow! Look what my grandpa gave me!'

DEFINITION: n. An old media format that is no longer popular or easily accessible, such as floppy disks, VHS tapes or stone tablets. v. To try to access data stored in an old-fashioned media format, especially it requires the use archaic technology and/or protocols.

Create | Read

Voted For: Retirosaur

Successfully added your vote for "Retirosaur".

You still have one vote left...

Defundtionals

Created by: silveryaspen

Pronunciation: de - fund - shun - als

Sentence: Humans have been inventing ways to store funds of knowledge from before the stone age to the present. Stone carvings, paper, books, pictures, vinyl records, tapes, disks, computer memory banks, data servers, ipods, blackberries, etc. We keep them all, though we seldom use the archaic ones. Was the first cosmic fund of knowledge written in the stars? Will the last fund of cosmic knowedge be written in the stars? Perhaps all these others in-between, are, were, and always have been, mere defundtionals.

Etymology: Fund, Defunctional. Fund: sources of things stored or saved. Defunctional: no longer used, operative, or functional.

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

philosophical one - bigveg, 2008-03-14: 03:04:00

So, what you are saying is that every idea ever related by mankind are somehow stored in the universe. The last words spoken by Amelia Earhart may be recorded in the sand of an isolated atoll somewhere, the waves of her voice rearranging the particles of sand that lay beneath her contorted face as she met her end. The lost works of Chaucer could be reclaimed from the atomic impressions remaining on a rotting desk from the 14th century. The library at Alexandria could be reconstructed from a million fragments of ashen scrolls with the ability to distinguish ink from charcoal, and vast arrays of computers to reassemble the fragments into complete manuscripts. Every electromagnetic conveyance of media ever produced can be reclaimed from the stars if we can overcome the speed of light in order to catch up to it, as it travels through the vast emptiness of space. The only idea that can never be successfully reclaimed is the idea that is never communicated, so long as we can use our intellect in pursuit of the technology to recover that information. The possibility of mankind is limitl...whoops, gotta go, American Idol is on! - Banky, 2008-03-14: 10:23:00

Nice word :) - Banky, 2008-03-14: 10:24:00

Maybe planned obsolescence is in our DNA? - arrrteest, 2008-03-14: 13:21:00

I think there may be a book in this one - Jabberwocky, 2008-03-14: 14:03:00

Wow! Never expected so many comments on my two QUEST-tionings! It was asked in a much lighter vein than it was received! Banky, you read so much more into those two little questions!!! But here's another question for what ever you all want to see in it. Do our subconscious minds tap into an ethereal storage bank of all knowledge in the universe, then come up with bits of knowledge and solutions our conscious minds couldn't find ... and then place that in our conscious minds? I'll leave the book writing up to Banky and Nosila. I just have questions ... for me, life is but a quest for more about all things. I'm just grateful for how much easier it is to access all information in all the various media! But at the rate it is growing ... there is no such thing as all-knowing among us mere mortals. You're right Jabberwocky ... a book ... maybe many books!!! (wink/big smile). - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 16:58:00

Nice word;thought provoking sentence! - OZZIEBOB, 2008-03-16: 17:03:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Rusticording

Created by: Tigger

Pronunciation: /ruhs-teh-kor-ding/

Sentence: George totally enjoyed bringing his 8-year-old son with him to help clean out Grandpa's attic — where Grandpa had stored all of his old electronics and rusticordings. Grandpa had been an avid technophile in his day and the attic was like an obsolete technology museum. When George showed him the Betamax and VHS video tapes, and explained that they were like DVD-R's, Nathan inpected them and asked where the lasers went. Then, when they got to the cassettes and 8-track tapes, George told Nathan that they were what people kept their MP3's on, and then he showed Nathan the rust-colored tape and demonstrated how it turned. Nathan wanted to know how people selected the song they wanted to hear, and so George had to explain Fast Forward and Rewind, while his son struggled with the archaic concept. The vinyl records were next, and when George showed him the groove on the record, and explained how you had to carefully position the needle so as not to scratch the record, Nathan just winced and said, "Wow, Grandpa really had it rough!"

Etymology: Rust[ic] - iron [ferric] oxide; also, a thin layer of ferric oxide was used in most magnetic tapes, floppy disks and early hard discs (Old German, rost "red") + Recording - storage device containing information (from Old French, recorder "testimony")

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

Yeah, I can no longer play my rustaccordion either! - arrrteest, 2008-03-14: 12:04:00

Will use it a lot! Excellent word! - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 18:22:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Technossil

Created by: diyan627

Pronunciation: tek-no-sil

Sentence: Diyan wants to update her various technossil dated between 1995 and 2007. Only recently did she upgrade to a digital camera as it was bittersweet parting with her SLR Nikon N60. At least there is still an element of art in the use of SLR, but that's way more than can be said for her gigantic desktop computer and the cob-web of wires that pour out from behind it.

Etymology: technology + fossil

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

Great word! Seems so obvious to me. - arrrteest, 2008-03-14: 14:36:00

Applies not only to the byte-gone devices but to the operators of them! I'm a technossil among all my stored technossils! Outstanding won! - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 18:36:00

Great word. - Mustang, 2008-03-14: 19:38:00

Thanks Arrrteest, Silveryaspen and Mustang! - diyan627, 2008-03-15: 11:17:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Antiquatech

Created by: kateinkorea

Pronunciation: AN ti KWAY tek

Sentence: This pile of old computers, calculators and beta and VHS players can all go in the trash because they are antiquatech.

Etymology: ANTIQUATED: old-fashioned and no longer suitable for modern conditions. TECH: short form of technology

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

So fun to say "An tick wa teck" ... sounds like the tick tock of the clock ... evokes that feeling that time passes it all by! - silveryaspen, 2009-01-07: 14:52:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Immuse

Created by: DragonRider428

Pronunciation: imm-yoos

Sentence: I found an immuse the other day - a record player!

Etymology: prefix "im" meaning "not" and "use"

| Comments and Points

Passéimperfect

Created by: Nosila

Pronunciation: pas say im pur fect

Sentence: Young Billy adored his grandfather and loved it when the old geezer told him stories about the passéimperfect. He knew his grandpa made this stuff up, but he loved to hear about the good old days anyway and in particular about the ancient tools they used. He regaled Billy with yarns about how his phone had numbers that went round and round when he stuck his finger in the holes for each set of numbers. Grandpa also told him about watching tv shows on the one channel in black & white and for some reason you needed a rabbit's ears to see the tiny picture better. (As if!) He also told him of cooking without using a microwave (yeah, right!) and buying big blocks of ice to keep everything in the fridge cold (you've got to be kidding!). That crazy Grandpa, he told Billy that a log on was something you put on a bonfire and that a link was something you put on your sleeves to keep the cuffs closed. He said a password was something you spoke into a grill on a door to get into a speak-easy (must be some kind of spellcheck for voice actioned computers?) Billy loved the really old things that Grandpa gave him. Like most boys his age, he loved dinosaurs. He was so excited today, because Grandpa was coming over and bringing him a thesaurus...he couldn't wait to play with it!

Etymology: passé (out of fashion) & past imperfect (grammar: tense imperfect refers to an action that is uncompleted or abandoned)

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

Rrrawr! Oh no, here comes the fierce Thesaurus Rex!... That's hilarious. - Tigger, 2008-03-14: 03:09:00

All that was makes me curious about what is to come! Great etymology ... conveys the way passages from the old ... lead to the knew ... growing, evolving, better and better ... perfecting! A Perfectly wonderful sentence and word! - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 17:08:00

Thanks, Tigger & silveryaspen. I always thought the best name for the Toronto NBA Team was TorontoSaurus Wrecks...but no one would listen... - Nosila, 2008-03-14: 23:16:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Stereolith

Created by: Jamagra

Pronunciation: ster'/e/o/lith

Sentence: Jacob cringed in embarrassment at every soccer game. When would his parents get rid of that stereolithic camera they had and get with the digital age? It was completely humiliating... especially when the flip flash blinded his teammates just as they tried to score a goal.

Etymology: stereo - three dimensional (as in stereoscopic photography & stereotype print); also stereophonic sound reproduction + monolith - something formed of a single slab of stone

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

Innovative etymology and word. Well done! - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 18:03:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Antechwhatee

Created by: galwaywegian

Pronunciation: ann teh wot eee

Sentence: the sound of the antechwhatee scratched along, every now and then receding so you could make out a strangulated voice crooning something about gramma.

Etymology: antiquity, tech, what

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

What a witty clever pun! Nice one! - silveryaspen, 2008-03-14: 23:52:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Obsoletist

Created by: wayoffcenter

Pronunciation: äbsəlētist

Sentence: Tommy feels that much of the best technology has been passed over because the majority of people are too dumb to appreciate it. He is a self-avowed obsoletist. Blackberry? iPhone? Forget them. He has his PDA and he's sticking with it.

Etymology: obsolete: no longer produced or used; out of date + elitist: a person who believes that a system or society should be ruled or dominated by an elite

----------------------------
COMMENTS:

artr Fun stuff! - artr, 2009-01-07: 06:39:00

----------------------------

| Comments and Points

Oldfashionology

artr

Created by: artr

Pronunciation: ōldfashənäləjē

Sentence: Denise loves to keep up with the newest technology. Her checkbook doesn’t always allow her to keep up. You can imagine her excitement when the prices started dropping on one of her favorite data-storage devices. Now she is in the dumps because zip drives have joined the world of oldfashionology.

Etymology: old-fashioned (no longer current or common; not modern) + technology (the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes)

| Comments and Points

Show All or More...