[uh-nak-ruh-niz-uh
m] 
| 1. | something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, esp. a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time: The sword is an anachronism in modern warfare. |
| 2. | an error in chronology in which a person, object, event, etc., is assigned a date or period other than the correct one: To assign Michelangelo to the 14th century is an anachronism. |
[an-uh-kron-ik-lee] , adverb | a·nach·ro·nism (ə-nāk'rə-nĭz'əm) n.
[French anachronisme, from New Latin anachronismus, from Late Greek anakhronismos, from anakhronizesthai, to be an anachronism : Greek ana-, ana- + Greek khronizein, to take time (from khronos, time).] a·nach'ro·nis'tic, a·nach'ro·nous (-nəs) adj., a·nach'ro·nis'ti·cal·ly, a·nach'ro·nous·ly adv. |
anachronism
(from Greek ana, "back," and chronos, "time"), neglect or falsification, intentional or not, of chronological relation. It is most frequently found in works of imagination that rest on a historical basis, in which appear details borrowed from a later age; e.g., a clock in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, an attendant to the Pharaoh shod in tennis shoes in Cecil B. deMille's The Ten Commandments. Anachronisms originate in disregard of the different modes of life and thought that characterize different periods or in ignorance of the facts of history.
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