Retronym

[1][2] The term retronym, a neologism composed of the combining forms retro- (from Latin retro,[3] "before") + -nym (from Greek ónoma, "name"), was coined by Frank Mankiewicz in 1980 and popularized by William Safire in The New York Times Magazine.

It was given the subtitle "Episode IV: A New Hope" for its 1981 theatrical re-release, shortly after the release of its sequel The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.

[10] Initially, this subtitle was limited to the opening text crawl, as all three films in the original Star Wars trilogy (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) were still sold under their original theatrical titles on home media formats (such as VHS and Laserdisc).

"[citation needed] Advances in technology and science are often responsible for the coinage of retronyms.

Likewise, visible light refers to electromagnetic radiation on the narrow visible spectrum, and water ice was coined to distinguish the solid state of water (including exotic forms) from the solid state of other volatiles such as carbon dioxide and argon.

This column about "trucks and cars" from Popular Mechanics in 1914 was written when the word truck did not necessarily connote a motor truck or the word car a motor car . The same things today would most likely be respectively called hand trucks and railroad cars , terms that existed in 1914 but were not yet required for clarity.