Antedating of "Oxygen"

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Fri, 23 Jan 2004 20:35:23 -0500,  Fred Shapiro
<fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> writes

>  oxygen (OED 1790)
>
>  1788 Louis Bernard, Baron Guyton de Morveau _Method of chymical
>  nomenclature, proposed by Messrs. De Morveau, Lavoisier_ (Early English
>  Collections Online)  We have acted agreeable to these conditions by
>  adopting the word _oxygen_, deriving it as Mr. Lavoisier proposed ... We
>  shall therefore say that vital air is oxygen gas, and that oxygen unites
>  with sulphur.

You didn't look far enough.  Using only the short selection from Morveau's
book in Herbert S. Klickstein, ed, _A Source Book in Chemistry_ Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986, I was able to supply the OED with antedatings
for:
    acetate
    acetic acid
    acetite
    acetous acid
    acidify
    azote
    azotic
    benzoate
    benzoic acid
    borate
    caloric (noun, synonym for "phlogiston")
    carbon
    carbonate
    carbonic (acid)
    carburet (noun, now called "carbide")
    gallate
    gallic acid
    gaseous
    muriate
    muriatic acid
    nitrate
    nitric acid
    nitrite
    nitrous acid (meaning HNO2; before Lavoisier "nitrous acid" meant HNO3,
which chemical is not called "nitric acid")
    oxygen
    oxygenate
    phosphate
    phosphite
    phosphoric acid
    pyroligneous acid (in this particular entry the OED gives a 1787 citation
from the original French text of Morveau)
    sulphate
    sulphite
    sulphuric acid
    sulphurous acid

It is not that likely that most of the above will be antedated in English,
since Morveau's book (published in French  in 1787) introduced the world to the
chemical nomenclature (still used today, with only a few modifications)
created by Lavoisier and his circle.

"acidifying" and "phosphoric acid" were used by Cavendish in 1784.  "muriatic
acid" was used by Joseph Black in 1755.  All 3 of these antedatings are in
Klickstein.

     - James A. Landau