It seems that so many websites offer, at the end of the year, a word that wins notoriety and acclaim as “word of the year”.  

I thought, why not do the same? Rather than search what others might think is a moniker of such substance, we can come up with our own word at The Gettysburg Experience.

 

Our first annual word of the year, is the unusual and rarely used anachronism.

It is a noun with historical significance. I chose it because it seems that not too many others put historical significance on historical fact.

The word anachronism simply means that a subject is out of time and place to be historically accurate.

We see it in Hollywood movies all the time. It’s hard for me to watch British historical films. An example is seeing Jane Eyre wearing a dress with a zipper in the back (which wasn’t patented until 1913). That’s an anachronistic mistake. Another is the cast of The Greatest Showman dancing and singing like a 21st century Broadway cast in a way that would've made 19th century denizens cringe. The majority of historical films and Broadway hits often play havoc with historical fact.

We see it on supposed “accurate” documentaries, too, at least some of the time. Books, usually novels, are equally guilty of it – sometimes (did you ever read the book about Abraham Lincoln being a vampire slayer? I didn’t. I actually judged a book by its cover that time.)

Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Let’s hope he’s right.

Several years ago, I edited a book as a favor to a publisher in the west. His author was writing a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. She should have visited Gettysburg and studied the Civil War before she started writing. She had her protagonist from South Carolina fighting for the Union (while the other Southern states had at least a few citizens join the Union, South Carolina did not have any), then the hero decided to arbitrarily leave his regiment and charge with the 20th Maine on Little Round Top (there was no way that would happen, as regiments fought with their brigades, divisions, and corps – where their commanders dictated, not by any individual whim of theirs), and some of the captured went right to Andersonville in 1863 – a prison that was not open until 1864. The author and publisher did not listen to me and went right ahead with their anachronism in book form. (Perhaps the first two examples are not exactly anachronisms – they’re just unbelievably dumb mistakes – but the last one definitely fits.)

Therefore, our word of the year is anachronism. It’s important to learn it and find evidence of it in our books, films, newscasts, and documentaries. It’s even more essential to correct these anachronisms on a regular basis. Our history is at stake.

Pass the word! And the historical facts.