Antedating of "Doofus"

[Dave Wilton]

> The presence of "citations" such as that for _doofus_ in the
> Lighter dict ("remembered from Jonathan Lighter's childhood")
> gives me pause, and raises an issue that troubles me about
> slang dictionaries that rely on citational "evidence". Clearly
> from this example, HDAS is not rigorously researched in some
> places,

There should be no problem with anecdoctal or remembered citations, so long
as they are clearly labeled as such. Oral citations can provide an
indication, albeit not conclusive evidence, of a term's use during a
particular period.

In the Lighter "doofus" case, the citation actually reads:

"1960 N.Y.C. schoolboy: You doofus!"

I would not call this a lack of rigor. If there is a criticism, it is that
to fully understand Lighter's notation, you must read the front material.
(And let's be honest; how many of us actually read the front material in
dictionaries?) Further, Lighter does not differentiate between the date of
the statement and the date of collection--is this a 1994 remembrance of a
usage from 1960? Or did he hear it said in 1960 and wrote it down on the
spot? The fact that it is a remembered oral citation and the date it was
collected could be more clearly stated in the citation itself. Historical
dictionaries routinely differentiate between dates of writing and dates of
publication, the same should be done for oral citations.

> whatever.  In many cases the slang expression may have been around for
> years, even decades, meaning that the dated citation, or a personal
> recollection, is really not "historical".  It is a kind of
> evidence, but not the OED kind.

The same can be said of any word in any historical dictionary, even the OED.
The problem may be larger for slang dictionaries than for others, but it
exists for all. And this argues for the inclusion of more personal
recollections (clearly labeled of course) in slang dictionaries. They are
evidence, perhaps not conclusive or "gold-standard," but evidence
nonetheless. The key is in labeling, so that readers can understand the
nature of the evidence that is being presented.

> I would further argue that by the very fact that a slang term
> is written down sort of kills it as slang.  It becomes a
> different thing after being recorded, it seems to me.  Slang
> is oral.  "Written-down slang" is nearly an oxymoron. Yes, I
> DO mean that "slang dictionary" is an oxymoron of sorts,

It is not a binary condition. Yes, slang is primarily an oral phenomenon,
but that does not mean any written use invalidates it as slang. At some
point, continued written use will mean a term has ceased to be slang, but
there is a large gray area in between first seeing print and
reclassification as "not-slang."

In particular, recording a term in a slang dictionary, as opposed to use in
literature or a newspaper, doesn't invalidate it as slang. People's use of
slang is not guided by what is written in slang dictionaries. People do use
dictionaries prescriptively for standard usages, but not for slang.

There are limits to our ability to record and document slang, more so than
other types of language, but that doesn't mean that such efforts are
fruitless. We just have to recognize that there are limits to creating a
comprehensive compendium of slang.