Banana (1325-1354)

Fred Shapiro fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Fri Feb 8 21:22:54 UTC 2002


On Fri, 8 Feb 2002 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>    What does OED do with books like this?  Cite them as 1300s?  1829?
> 1958?  Not at all??
>    Ibn Battuta's _Travels_ is cited ("Lee's tr.") in OED's "colocana"
> entry.  The date--the first citation--is given as 1829.  No other date
> is given for the reader.

Again we get back to the issue of whether the OED is a dictionary of the
English language or a dictionary of all languages.  If it is a dictionary
of the English language, which it is, then of course the date given is the
date of the translation into English.  The date of the original
publication in another language is not especially relevant.

It is not even clear that the usages you mention are early usages of
Arabic words.

Fred Shapiro


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