OED first uses

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 11:26:49AM -0500, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
> In a message dated 12/4/03 7:59:00 AM, fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU writes:
>
>
> > ... a remark that appears less snide now in view of the ease with which
> >  I and Barry and OED3 are demolishing OED first uses).
> >
> Well, "demolish" strikes me as rather too strong a word. S seems to suggest
> that the OED was primarily conceived of as a dictionary of first uses.
>
> In fact, though interesting and occasionally even useful, "first uses" is a
> relatively trivial aspect of lexicography, aqnd marginal predatings by only a
> few years is even moreso. The OED clearly meant to suggest only that "these are
> the first uses that we've come up with so far," not "these are the first uses
> that anyone will ever find."
>
> It is a truism of lexicography that true first uses will never be in a
> dictionary, since they almost always are oral, not written. The fact that someone
> may find that, say, UNEMPLOYMENT was first used in print 5 years before the
> particular cite that the OED printed is certainly nice to have, but the OED is
> scacely "demolished" therby.

I might agree about the relative strength of "demolish", but I
can't say I agree with much of the rest of this, Ron. While
"first uses" may be a relatively trivial aspect of
lexicography as a whole, it seems to me to be an enormously
important aspect of historical lexicography.

Certainly OED knows that in almost all cases their first
quotes are not the absolute, rock-solid, this-is-the-coinage
first quotes, and that we're only doing the best we can.

And while it's true that many antedatings of a couple of years
may be of minor import, this case strikes me as different. Here
we have what is perhaps the most important financial
publication in the English-speaking world making a broad
claim about the cultural history of labor, based solely on a
false account of the origin of a word. The (false) connection
to a particular event, the panic of 1873, also serves to
distort the historical record.

Providing accurate information about such uses seems to me to
be exactly what the purpose of the OED is, or at least a very
big part of its purpose, not a minor part to be dismissed as
'relatively trivial' and 'occasionally even useful'.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED