Antedating of "Agnostic"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sun, 1 Jan 2006, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

>> No, that's much too early for these words to have appeared.  Your source,
>> which I assume is Making of America, misdates this article.  The article
>> is actually dated 1891.
>
> Right you are. That's surprising-- MoA is usually quite reliable with
> its dating of articles.

Actually I find that MOA not infrequently misdates articles.  For example,
the "agnostic" search pulls up a supposedly 1870 hit that appears to
antedate the adjectival usage of the word by 3 years, but the article is
really an 1885 article misdated.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
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