[tres]

I get that this is an ironic take on the semantic reference and the object it represented but I think there is merit in talking about why the obviously-not-floppy 3.5 disk was called "floppy."

At the time, "hard disk" referred to the spinning disk inside the computer & so though "floppy" wasn't technically accurate when referring to the 3.5 inch floppy, it was a nomenclature referring its utility or type rather than a physical description actual object itself.

"Floppies" were the things that you stuck in and removed... didn't matter their covering material, nor what size they were.

It's interesting to think about how many of our words have the same kind of history; once having a widespread descriptive meaning associated with physical traits of the object itself which ultimately were divorced from the original meaning over time...

I'm going to hazard a guess that most of our nouns have that kind of history... but the interesting thing here is that this morphing happened so quickly and it's because the object itself changed, not some generational loss of original meaning...

[mwfunk]

This kind of thing fascinates me. Another example is the various names we have for types of cars- coupes, sedans, even more obscure ones like 'shooting brake'. These were names for types of horse-drawn carriages, and cars inherited the names as models were released which mimicked some aspects of one type of carriage or another.

Another example is when someone refers to recording something as "taping" it, even though tape as a recording medium is mostly long gone. In their conversations, the term "taping" made the leap from "recording on tape" to simply "recording", and lost its original meaning.

[djmips]

I don't agree. The plastic spinning discs inside a 3.5 were still floppy and discs. We didn't call Bernoulli boxes or Zip drives floppies. Your clue is the word disc. The 3.5 inch disc was inside a rigid case but still a disc and yes floppy.