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Mind your language

Is retro-fitting really ‘retro?

3 February 2024

9:00 AM

3 February 2024

9:00 AM

I read in the New Yorker about people who make sound effects ‘in a large, retrofitted barn, painted baby blue’. It made me wonder again how people imagine retrofitting works. It seems to be the work of time-travellers. Do they think that refitting a barn now implies that a photo taken of it 50 years ago would show the new fittings?

Retro– signifies ‘backwards’.

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