Why the OED does not know everything

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 02/08/2002 8:45:17 AM Eastern Standard Time,
fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU writes:

> Most readers for the original OED were not brilliant researchers like
>  Barry, but rather literary-minded people with time on their hands who
>  happened to enlist in the effort of looking through texts to make citation
>  slips for the OED.  As is well known, non-literary and non-British texts
>  were canvassed less thoroughly.

and in an earlier post
> And many antedatings are contributed by someone who was glancing at a text
> or looking up something particular.

I have an example of things that can go wrong with an apparently simple piece
of OED citation-searching.

Barry Popik mentions the word "benzoin".  From the OED2 entry for "benzoin":
"From benzoin, ws formed a1800 the chemical term benzoic (acid), whence at a
later period benzin (e), benzol, and the numerous names of the benzene
series." (punctuation corrected, italics ignored)

Going to the entry for "benzoic", we find the first citation dated as 1791.
Antedating 1791 does not require a "brilliant researcher", since the
applicable document was published in Henry M. Leicester and Herbert S.
Klickstein, ed, A Source Book in Chemistry Princeton NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1986.

Chemical nomenclature did not develop gradually but rather was deliberately
invented by Lavoisier and his circle in France in the 1780's.  Lavoisier's
colleague Louis de Morveau wrote a book on this nomenclature which was
published in France in 1787 and translated into English in 1788.  This book
includes "benzoic acid."

Lavoisier himself wrote a book entitled "Elements of Chemistry" (I suspect
the pun is intentional) which was translated into English by Robert Kerr, and
is available both in a facsimile edition by Dover in 1965 and in a re-typeset
edition in Robert M. Hutchins, ed. Great Books of the Western World Volume
45: Lavoisier, Fourier, Faraday Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 1952.

First problem:  the OED accepts the title page of Kerr's translation as
dating the translation as 1790.  However, according to the "Advertisement of
the Translator" in the book,  this translation was prepared during September
and October of 1789.  Which is the proper date for this book?

In any event, benzoic acid appears in this book, pages 120 and 275.  Even the
1790 date provides a second OED2 antedating.

I went through Morveau and Lavoisier line by line (in spare moments scattered
over about two years---whether or not Barry Popik is a better researcher than
I am, he is most definitely a faster researcher! ) and eventually delivered a
couple of dozen antedatings to the OED.

What is remarkable is that Lavoisier's "Elements of Chemistry" had not only
been around for over two centuries but had been quite famous and probably
well-read for that entire period (as a matter of fact, I discovered it
because the Dover reprint was being used as a textbook at the local four-year
college).  Yet it would appear that in the entire lifetime of the OED I was
the first person who ever made a systematic search of this well-known book.

As Fred Shapiro says above, the book was not "canvassed thoroughly", despite
its fame in at least scientific circles, perhaps because it was
"non-literary".

Then why did some citations from the Kerr translation appear in the OED2?
Some, I am sure, because
> And many antedatings are contributed by someone who was glancing at a text
> or looking up something particular.

Again, from personal experience:  the OED's current appeal list includes
"back issue", which I located in the classified ads of a 1962 magazine.  You
can bet that I did not search the rest of that issue for possible other
antedatings!

And how did I find a citation in such an obscure source?  Because I had
purchased a number of 1960's issues of that magazine from a dealer I had
found in the classified ads, and it did not take much brillance to backtrack
looking for similar ads in earlier issues.  That is, I found "back issue" in
a magazine which I had purchased as a back issue!

Conclusions:
1) Even the OED and its legion of contributors (Tribune Shapiro?  Quaestor
Popik?) cannot search everything every printed.
2) If 1) were false, the ADS-L list would go out of existence, so the fact
that you are reading this e-mail proves that that 1) is true.

        James A. Landau
        Systems Engineer
      FAA Technical Center (ACT-350/BCI)
        Atlantic City Airport NJ 08405
        USA

Does the fact that I have the title of "engineer" mean that I am in the
baggage train of the OED"s legion of contributors and therefore not a
legionaire?

        James A. Landau (camp follower)