[chairmanmow]

This article's word choice using terms like "larping" and "cosplaying" to talk about Mark Twain on a history site seems like a less than ideal writing style; it made me stop reading and facepalm for a moment.

[eyelidlessness]

That’s understandable, but as I read it I thought “if these were contemporary terms he’d probably have embraced them”.

[JasserInicide]

"larping" is different from being in an active military unit performing military maneuvers

[physicles]

Did you read the article? It's a stretch to call it an active military unit. As Twain himself wrote, the only maneuver they performed was to retreat, which they barely even knew how to do.

[Talanes]

It's an 800 word article on a magazine publisher's website, how formal do you expect the language to be?

[notafraudster]

It’s less the formality and more the hypermodern idioms that feel out of place (what’s the opposite of anachronistic?) in talking about a historical subject. Like, yes Mark Twain had the rizz and the Confedussies took the L but that’s probably not how I’d discuss it.

[jwestbury]

> what’s the opposite of anachronistic?

In this case? Anachronistic still. Anachronistic just means something like "belonging to a different time period," and it doesn't strictly imply earlier or later.

[bookofjoe]

that this word goes both ways in time is the best thing I've learned so far today

From Oxford Languages:

>a·nach·ro·nism

noun

a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.

"everything was as it would have appeared in centuries past apart from one anachronism, a bright yellow construction crane"

an act of attributing a custom, event, or object to a period to which it does not belong.

"it is anachronism to suppose that the official morality of the age was mere window dressing"

[jaclaz]

>what’s the opposite of anachronistic?

Newfangled?