anatopism

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ἀνά (aná, “against”) and τόπος (tópos, “place”); apparently by analogy with anachronism.

Noun

anatopism (plural anatopisms)

1. (rare) A thing that is out of its proper place; the geographic counterpart to anachronism.

   A war elephant described rampaging through Tenochtitlan in a novel about the Aztec Empire would be an anatopism.

   • 1836: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq., M. A., ed, The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

     […] and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two centuries; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism.

   • 1912, Augustus Hopkins Strong, Miscellanies:

     There is no anachronism in putting them together; it is a sort of anatopism rather; the painter has placed within our view two scenes which no mortal eye could have witnessed at the same time.

   • 1921, John Anthony Scott, The Unity of Homer:

     It is a remarkable fact that, so far as I can judge, no case of local inconsistency, not a single anatopism, can be brought home to the Iliad.

   • 1995, Tony Killick, The Flexible Economy: Causes and Consequences of the Adaptability of National Economies:

     Much of the literature on the 'Japanese Miracle' (as well as on that vast anatopism, the transfer of Japanese recipes to Western countries) expatiates on […]

   • 2006, Lilie Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering:

     […] the semiotic mechanism of reorganizing space in this manner as an anatopism. Anatopism renders places such as Bali equivalents of other places […]

Translations

thing that is out of its proper place

• Hungarian: anatopizmus (hu)
• Portuguese: anatopismo m

Anagrams

• Patmosian, potamians