A more extreme version is what I call the Stonehenge cycle:
- humanity names something, e.g. Stonehenge,
- humanity finds other, somewhat similar things, and names them similarly, e.g. Woodhenge, Seahenge,
- people studying the field realise that the term has become so broad as to lose any meaning, and attempt to create a tighter definition of what a thing is - e.g. a ‘henge’ is ‘ a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area’
- the original thing no longer qualifies under the new definition, e.g. Stonehenge is not a ‘henge’.
Comments
It’s surprisingly common.
A more extreme version is what I call the Stonehenge cycle:
- humanity names something, e.g. Stonehenge,
- humanity finds other, somewhat similar things, and names them similarly, e.g. Woodhenge, Seahenge,
- people studying the field realise that the term has become so broad as to lose any meaning, and attempt to create a tighter definition of what a thing is - e.g. a ‘henge’ is ‘ a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area’
- the original thing no longer qualifies under the new definition, e.g. Stonehenge is not a ‘henge’.