Recency illusion

Not to be confused with 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.^[1] 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".^[2]

According to Zwicky, the illusion is caused by selective attention.^[2]

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,^[3] it is quite old,^[4][A] and has been in regular use in formal contexts as far back as the 14th century.^[5][6]

See also

• Frequency illusion

Notes

A. 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).