Words of the Year and the Century

[Al Futrell]

AAllan at AOL.COM wrote:

> There's always a question of whether to credit a word in its earliest
> appearance, or at the height of its popularity. In our book, we tend to date
> words by first appearance, but not always. For example, Ebonics was coined in
> 1973 but popularized in 1997, and we used that later date. - Allan Metcalf

Allan:  Why would you use when the term was popular rather than when it
was first (supposedly) used/recorded?  I'm curious about the rationale for that
decision.