Re: Re: OED first uses

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Very sensible and wise words, Jesse. Thanks.

I did not mean to be dismissive: if first uses were totally useless and
trivial, it would be a waste of space to print them at all. Quite right that this
seems indeed to be one of those occasions when establishing first use may be
quite important.


In a message dated 12/4/03 4:47:14 PM, jester at PANIX.COM writes:


> 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'.
>