Words from Popular Literature Not in OED

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

>> "Some of the contributors to this thread seem to be
>> unaware that the word existed before Frank Herbert."
>>
>> Exactly so, Mark. I didn't quite have the 'nads to state it so clearly
>> and so concisely. :-)
>
> I don't want to speak for any of the other contributors to the
> thread, but I'd still be pretty sure that _everyone_ who has
> contributed knows that _melange_ 'mixture' has been around for
> many centuries before Frank Herbert. The issue Fred was
> raising, it seems to me, is whether the specific _sense_ of
> _melange_ found in _Dune_ ("the fictional spice-drug central
> to the Dune series", as Wikipedia has it) belongs in OED.

Thanks, Jesse.  I thought it was obvious that I was talking about a
specific sense of a word.  If I had used the example "precious" from Lord
of the Rings (an even more prominent illustration of a term from a modern
literary work that is not included in OED) would the people with gonads
have thought that I meant that the word "precious" was coined by Tolkien?

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
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   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
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