When the words 'bowler hat, shilling, bobby...' appear in a text, they tend to show that it is from a certain time period. What's the word used to describe this sort of giveaway? It's kind of similar to semantic field but surely there's a key word more specific to this concept?
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1I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but are you looking for something like 'era'?– AloCommented Oct 29, 2014 at 14:57
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1Maybe representative of an era is the phrase to describe the words.– BarmarCommented Oct 29, 2014 at 14:58
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A kind of "vintage," but there ought to be a better term. I don't remember of any though.– KrisCommented Oct 29, 2014 at 17:25
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2 Answers
I don't know of a specific term but you can say that certain words date a text (from the American Heritage Dictionary, courtesy of wordnik.com):
date
transitive v. To determine the date of: date a fossil.
transitive v. To betray the age of: Pictures of old cars date the book.
So, in your example, you could say
The presence of words like shilling and bowler hat1 date the text to the 19th century2.
1But not bobby which is still quite commonly used today.
2 Or, at any rate, before the 1971 decimalization.
It tends to imply lasting for only a short time, but...
transitory - tending to pass away : not persistent
...works for me in OP's context. There's also transient - but to me at least, that has even stronger overtones of existing only briefly.
answered Oct 29, 2014 at 15:46
