Subject: How can multiple retronyms prevail?

From an email:
<<The common torpedo produces an electric shock up to 200 volts.
The ancient Greeks and Romans used them for therapeutic shock therapy.>>

Torpedo is a genus in biology but is most commonly understood as a
seaborne weapon of war. Is there a retronym for the biological torpedo
to avoid confusion with the weapon?

Acoustic guitar is a self-explanatory retronym for what was once just
a Guitar but prefixing Torpedo with Common doesn't do the trick, IMHO.

It looks like a small sting ray, so I'd expect it to commonly be called
some kind of ray. I find the retronym Cramp Ray but it competes with
Common Torpedo and Torpedo Fish both of which look confusing.

How do multiple retronyms come to prevail? Acoustic Guitar doesn't
have multiple retronyms.

On Thursday, November 23, 2023 at 4:43:16 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> Subject: How can multiple retronyms prevail?
>
> From an email:
> <<The common torpedo produces an electric shock up to 200 volts.
> The ancient Greeks and Romans used them for therapeutic shock therapy.>>
>
> Torpedo is a genus in biology but is most commonly understood as a
> seaborne weapon of war. Is there a retronym for the biological torpedo
> to avoid confusion with the weapon?
>
> Acoustic guitar is a self-explanatory retronym for what was once just
> a Guitar but prefixing Torpedo with Common doesn't do the trick, IMHO.
>
> It looks like a small sting ray, so I'd expect it to commonly be called
> some kind of ray. I find the retronym Cramp Ray but it competes with
> Common Torpedo and Torpedo Fish both of which look confusing.

Also Torpedo Ray and Electric Ray (which could also be confusing).

There's also "cramp-fish", which isn't a retronym--I stopped looking when
I got to 1674 (Francis Gouldman, /A Copious Dictionary in Three Parts/).

https://books.google.com/books?id=_o3IEeIBrzUC&pg=PP114

The first OED citation for the naval torpedo is from 1776.

Here's "cramp-ray" in 1749

https://books.google.com/books?id=hCel34rwkUUC&pg=PA745

> How do multiple retronyms come to prevail? Acoustic Guitar doesn't
> have multiple retronyms.

Lots of species have more than one common name.

--
Jerry Friedman