I Got Sidetracked, But Now I'm Humming Right Along

So my latest fascination, which I've blogged about before, is anachronistic language. To be more precise, I'm interested in words that we don't think of as new or modern, but that would have been meaningless to anyone before a particular point in time.

An example will illustrate. If you told Isaac Newton that you had been "sidetracked," I'm pretty sure he would have looked at you funny. To "sidetrack" a railroad car is to divert it onto one of the tracks that runs parallel to the main tracks. Those parallel tracks were just to hold railroad cars while more important traffic went through, so while you were "sidetracked" you weren't going to make any progress. Hence, you know, getting "sidetracked."

So, no railroads, no "sidetracked." Now, if you go back far enough, of course, any word is going to be anachronistic, but I guess I'm interested in the words with an etymology that is unexpectedly recent but that you realize couldn't be otherwise once you think about it (like "sidetrack").

These words are not so easy to find, and of course you always have to beware of folk/false etymologies. Still, fun game! I guess the way I would play the game is to think of a word, and then try to figure out when that word would have begun to make sense to an English speaker. I guess "sidetrack" would have started to make sense to lots of people when passenger rail travel became common, so mid-to-late 19th century? But anyway, fun game.