New light on "truthiness"

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Mon Jan 16 18:07:20 UTC 2006


I just wrote up a Lang Log post on our old friend "truthiness" as it
appears in the work cited by OED, _The Memoirs of Joseph John Gurney_
(Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, 1854):

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002764.html

OED has apparently erred in giving a date of 1824-- on closer
inspection, the cite provided actually looks to be from 1837. Also,
Gurney used the word again in 1844. But I can't find any other
pre-Colbert uses in print. Can anyone find other attestations?


--Ben Zimmer

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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