Words at Play : Top 10 New Words for Old Things

#10: Silent Movie

What It Used to Be Called:

Movie

What changed:

Title cards quietly disappeared.

In the 1920s, the new kind of movies with built-in soundtracks were called talkies.

Once it became obvious that sound was here to stay, talkie was supplanted by movie, and silent movie designated the old-fashioned style.

An early use:

"Nobody can prophesy with any accuracy as to the effect the spoken movie will have upon the silent movie." — John Gallishaw, Twenty Problems of the Fiction Writer, 1929

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