apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Green vs Eco.

I have nothing to add, but I kind of want to get a copy of that graph as a print and hang it on my wall!

What I'd really love is to create a design vocabulary for all the craigslisters out there...

I'm sure you all know what I mean- it's impossible to find what you're looking for, even by using search terms. One man's buffet is another man's sideboard. Dresser - Chest, Hutch - China Cabinet, Chaise - Fainting Couch... it goes on and on.

I wish we could distribute a little furniture/design term manual. *sigh*

hunter green vs. sage green, 1988-2001

chaise longue vs. chaise lounge (When did the Americanized version actually become acceptable?)

farmhousemoderne,

Around the same time Iraq became "I-Rack". It bugs me every time I hear it.

It's great that someone mentioned the tipically misused "Modern". I always wanna yell at whoever says modern instead of contemporary.

eddie p-
They almost ARE interchangeable since so many contemporary (i.e. current) homes are basically modern period rooms. :-)

I think that's a little backwards. Ordinary words that mean exactly the same thing were appropriated to mean what was current at the time. Neither of these words are accurate to mean what they really mean and it was somewhat arbitrary which word happened to be favored in that order. It is sort of like, well, "modern" was already used, and although this is more modern, we have to come up with something else. Hal, get the thesaurus.

A lot of words that mean something to designers are words that could mean almost anything and then used to define something exclusive. Classical, modern, art nouveau, contemporary, traditional, craftsmen, etcetera. I can see where it would be convenient if we could teach the world the finesses of your language, but you have to agree, it's confusing to the average person for a reason.

Thanks, modernguy and farmhousemoderne! We'll run your word suggestions above and see if we get any results. Green has multiple meanings so the results may be a bit skewed. More specific words or word pairs work better, but it's hard to find those in the design lexicon, which, as people have been pointing out, is full of common terms with multiple meanings (eg. modern, contemporary). The one thing this little project of ours has revealed is how much slippage there is in design terminology. If anyone has any more suggestions, post them here. PS "Chaise lounge!" I even hear people saying that in Canada, and French is one of our official languages. I just checked and chaise lounge is actually an accepted spelling in American dictionaries now, albeit as a folk etymology, but nevertheless I really doubt any NYT editor would allow it.

entryway -vs- landing strip -vs- foyer

fugly vs "it made me throw up in my mouth a little"

!!!!!!!!!!
You're on.

Hey look! Jer found this simple application you can use to check NYT word frequency (but only for 2008):
http://tyn-search.appspot.com/