{{Short description|Mistaken belief that something is of recent origin}}{{Distinguish|Recency bias}}
The '''recency illusion''' is the belief or impression, on the part of someone who has only recently become aware of a long-established phenomenon, that the phenomenon itself must be of recent origin. The term was coined by Arnold Zwicky, a linguist at Stanford University who is primarily interested in examples involving words, meanings, phrases, and grammatical constructions.<ref>{{cite journal |authorlink1= John R. Rickford |last1=Rickford |first1=John R. |last2=Wasow |first2=Thomas |last3=Zwicky |first3=Arnold |date=2007 |title=Intensive and quotative ''all'': something new, something old |journal=American Speech |doi=10.1215/00031283-2007-001 |volume=82 |issue=1 |pages=3–31|doi-access=free }}</ref> However, use of the term is not restricted to linguistic phenomena: Zwicky has defined it simply as, "the belief that things ''you'' have noticed only recently are in fact recent".<ref name=LL02386>{{cite web |last=Zwicky |first=Arnold |date=7 August 2005 |title=Just between Dr. Language and I |website=Language Log |url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002386.html |accessdate=5 May 2015}}</ref>
According to Zwicky, the illusion is caused by selective attention.<ref name="LL02386"/>
==Examples== The use of ''they'', ''them'', or ''their'' to reference a singular antecedent without specific gender, as in "If George or Sally come by, give them the package", is known as the singular ''they''. Although this usage is often cited as a modern invention,<ref name="grammarly">{{cite web |url=https://www.grammarly.com/blog/use-the-singular-they/ |title=What Is the Singular They, and Why Should I Use It? |last=Mora |first=Celeste |date=May 12, 2020 |website=Grammarly blog |publisher=Grammarly |access-date=July 9, 2021 |quote=Admittedly, using the singular they in a formal context may still cause some raised eyebrows, so be careful if you’re submitting a paper to a particularly traditional teacher or professor. But the tides are turning, and English will soon be more efficient}}</ref> it is quite old,<ref name="MWDU">{{cite book |year=1989 |title=Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage |url=https://archive.org/details/merriamwebsterd00merr |url-access=registration |publisher=Merriam Webster|isbn=978-0-87779-132-4 }}</ref>{{efn| ''Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage'' noted, "Although the lack of a common-gender third person pronoun has received much attention in recent years from those concerned with women's issues, the problem, as felt by writers, is much older" (1989, page 901).}} and has been in regular use in formal contexts as far back as the 14th century.<ref>{{cite book|ref={{SfnRef|American Heritage Dictionaries|1996}}|date=1996|title=The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BEHFyMCdwssC|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=978-0-547-56321-3}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Pullum|first=Geoffrey|author-link=Geoffrey Pullum|date=13 April 2012|title=Sweden's gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun|url=http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3898|quote=[...] our pronoun ''they'' was originally borrowed into English from the Scandinavian language family [...] and since then has been doing useful service in English as the morphosyntactically plural but singular-antecedent-permitting gender-neutral pronoun known to linguists as singular ''they''|access-date=28 March 2023|archive-date=8 May 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160508062955/http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3898|url-status=live}}</ref>
Other examples include ''doable'' from Middle English, ''legit'' from the 1890s, and ''high'' in the sense of {{gloss|intoxicated}} from the 1920s.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Shariatmadari |first=David |date=2014-07-01 |title=11 words that are much older than you think |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/01/words-much-older-than-you-think-language |access-date=2026-03-28 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref>Oxford English Dictionary, “doable (adj. & n.),” March 2026, <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1072394857</nowiki>.</ref><ref>Oxford English Dictionary, “legit (n.2, adj., & adv.),” September 2025, <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7965676439</nowiki>.</ref> The use of ''OMG'', an abbreviation for ''oh my God'', was first recorded in 1917 in a letter to Winston Churchill.<ref>{{Cite news |last=N |last2=P |last3=R |date=2017-09-09 |title='OMG' Turns 100 |url=https://www.npr.org/2017/09/09/549802497/omg-turns-100 |access-date=2026-03-28 |work=NPR |language=en}}</ref>
The Tiffany problem is the phenomenon that names like Tiffany may appear anachronistic in historical fiction, despite being historically attested, due to their modern usage.
==See also== * Frequency illusion
==Notes== {{notelist}}
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
== Further reading == * {{cite journal |last=Zwicky |first=Arnold |date=17 November 2007 |title=The word: Recency illusion |journal=New Scientist |volume=196 |issue=2630 |page=60 |url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626302.300-the-word-recency-illusion.html |url-access=subscription |doi=10.1016/S0262-4079(07)62923-6 }}
Category:Historical linguistics