Barry Popik and William Safire

Fred Shapiro fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Mon Oct 2 02:41:00 UTC 2000


I concur with Gerald Cohen that Barry Popik should be more temperate in
his comments on this list about William Safire.  Barry is one of the
sharpest historical-lexicographical researchers ever.  It is true that Mr.
Safire sometimes makes mistakes, and it is unfortunate that the Times
appears to have a policy against printing corrections or, in all but a few
cases, letters to the editor regarding the "On Language" columns.  But
these facts do not justify Barry's extreme denunciations of Safire.

William Safire, mistakes and all, is far more careful, scholarly and
open-minded than other popular writers about language.  He has been a
friend of the American Dialect Society, the Dictionary Society of North
America and DARE.  He gives scholarship about the English language much
more publicity than it would ever get otherwise.

In the specific column that triggered Barry's most recent wrath, Safire's
position is a plausible one.  I personally disagree with Safire's theory
that the 1909 "Big Apple" citation should be considered the first use of
the term, and am pretty much in accord with the Popik theory, but the
argument for the 1909 first use is not entirely unreasonable.

Fred Shapiro


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Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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