"Dinophile"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 31 May 2005 07:22:13 -0700, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>Google finds about 350 hits for "dinophile" (a dinosaur enthusiast) going
>back to 1993.  I first saw it in W. J. T. Mitchell's _The Last Dinosaur
>Book_ (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1998).

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Toronto Star, Dec 10, 1988, p. G24 (Nexis)
DINOPHILES /Di-no-filz/ n. People who love prehistoric animals, preferably
dinosaurs.
Okay, so we lied. You won't find dinophiles in the dictionary. But at Los
Angeles' Natural History Museum, you'll find lots of them, gathered around
one of the biggest kid-pleasers to roll into town since skateboards.
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--Ben Zimmer