Admit it: you’re prob­a­bly one of those peo­ple who refers to his microwave oven as a “microwave.”

Now that you’re think­ing about it, you prob­a­bly real­ize that you do not refer to your elec­tric stove as an “elec­tric.” You may have just now dis­cov­ered that, if you own a cell­phone, wire­less Eth­er­net (802.11) adapters, a satel­lite TV receiver, or a mod­ern auto­mo­tive cruise con­trol, you use microwaves in places other than your kitchen. You’re in dire straits now.

“Microwave oven” was once a com­mon retronym to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the appli­ance from a con­ven­tional oven. But typ­i­cally, the even­tual aban­don­ment of the retronym drops the qual­i­fier and not the device’s func­tion: “dig­i­tal com­puter” became “com­puter,” and “color TV” became “TV.” Of course, the microwave oven did not make the con­vec­tion oven obsolete.

The Chal­lenge: Name another device which, like the microwave oven, has become dis­tinctly known by its tech­nol­ogy and not its function.

We gotta install microwave ovens
Cus­tom kitchen deliv­er­ies
We gotta move these refrig­er­a­tors
We gotta move these color TV’s
That ain’t workin’—that’s the way you do it:
You play the gui­tar on the MTV…