Request: Best Ideas Column

[Mark A Mandel]

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Kathleen E. Miller wrote:

#Hello All,
#
#The editors at 43rd street are harping Safire to write to theme for the
#next deadline. It is the annual best ideas column outlining the best
#inventions of 2003. So we're looking for words - new and useful - that were
#coined etc. this year to write a little piece "to theme." Any ideas?

This is the first I've seen "harp" used as a transitive verb, much less
with a person as object. I only know it, in anything like this sense, as
"harp on [a topic]"; and so do MW and OED (both online).

Antedates?

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania