''Mad Men'' Anachronism Watch

Six questionable lines from the first three seasons of AMC's "Mad Men."
Read Ben Zimmer's "On Language" column in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage-t.html
And see his Word Routes column on the Visual Thesaurus for further discussion of why these lines are potentially anachronistic:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2356/

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• mad
• men
• anachronisms
• new
• york
• times
• on
• language
• ben
• zimmer

[VisualThesaurus]

See the video description for links to Ben Zimmer's discussion of these lines in his On Language column for The New York Times Magazine and his Word Routes column for the Visual Thesaurus.

[VisualThesaurus]

Stay tuned to the Visual Thesaurus for an explanation of why these lines are potentially anachronistic. They'll be discussed by Ben Zimmer in his Word Routes column next week, and in his On Language column for The New York Times Magazine.

[NYCBlonde]

@BaronvonCookiepants Nooooooo! Absolutely not. "Hey" as a greeting instead of "hi" is a Southernism; check out To Kill a Mockingbird for examples ("Hey, Boo" in the climax). Dick Whitman grew up close enough to the South that he may have picked up this regionalism.

[danning1]

@ptom4587 Shakespeare didn't know better, though. Historians weren't nearly as thorough back then, so there were a lot of things about the Roman Empire that he wouldn't have necessarily known about.

P.S. Deliberate anachronisms in comedies can be quite funny. It's hilarious in the movie "Walker" (about American adventurer William Walker who was briefly president of Nicaragua in the mid-19th century) when he's evacuated out of the country by Marine helicopter.

[giantsean]

@danning1 not to mention Chachi's feathered hair...

[Geforce2187]

@Geforce2187 and also I just noticed if you look close, there's recessed style fire sprinklers which i believe didnt come out until the late 1980s

[Geforce2187]

Check out the florescent lights and air conditioner vents on the ceiling in the first scene which look too new to be correct for the 1960s.

[mac51685]

Thank you!! That 'I'm so over you' line has been bothering me since I first saw it.

[ptom4587]

You know who used anachronisms Shakespeare, I highly doubt the Brutus and the other conspirators were in a room with a clock. If it doesn't conflict with the overall story it doesn't matter.

[vaidisuh]

this is a joke right

[pitythekitty]

These lines aren't questionable, they just don't belong. Thanks, it was amusing. Reminds me of the old lady in Benjamin Button saying "it is what it is" (not really anachronous, but unlikely phrase for an elderly person).

[TimKraemer]

@szqsk8 This was obviously compiled by a huge fan and follower of the show. Calm down.