retcon
v.— «In the useful and fast-spreading parlance of comic book fans, Dijkstra has boldly “retconned” most of 20th century American art history. That is, he’s given it a new “retroactive continuity,” rewritten it so that a discarded early movement suddenly becomes the consummation of everything that came before and a martyr to just about everything after.» —“How representational work was overshadowed by abstract art” by David Kipen San Francisco Chronicle Aug. 10, 2003. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Asthenosphere, a geologist’s term for the molten layer beneath the earth’s crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Plus: What the heck is a dogberg? It’s when...