Borschtich, Blini, Tschi, Piroggi, Vodka (1799)(A GEM!!)

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, James A. Landau wrote:

> My guess is that whatever professor or madman went through _ The Jewish
> Manual_ just was not as thorough as s/he might have been.  Or perhaps that
> searcher was working from an appeals list and failed to notice some potential
> antedatings.

Speaking as someone with much more experience in antedating the OED than
either Barry Popik or James Landau, I would point out that even a very
careful antedater is not going to look up every possible word or sense of
a word or phrase in the OED to see whether the text before him or her
represents an antedating.  Inevitably the professor or madman makes some
assumptions and skips over certain words or phrases and makes some
mistakes.

And many antedatings are contributed by someone who was glancing at a text
or looking up something particular.  If I pick up a book and find an
antedating it doesn't mean I have committed myself to study every word of
it for antedatings.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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