Words from Popular Literature Not in OED
Fred Shapiro
fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Tue Nov 7 19:54:07 UTC 2006
On Sat, 4 Nov 2006, Jeff Prucher wrote:
> love to see it, if it does.) Or is your query not about spreading into wider,
> albeit still limited, currency but rather about words coined in major literary
> works generally?
My point is that the original OED included many words solely on the basis
of their usage in major literary (or even not-so-major literary) works.
I am not sure whether the same policy is being followed in the current
revision. My question is perhaps a politically incorrect one, since the
usual criticism of OED nowadays is the opposite, that the original OED
privileged literary usage over demotic usage (although I am using
"literary" in a very demotic sense, as illustrated by my examples from
Vonnegut and Superman Comics).
> Editor, BRAVE NEW WORDS: THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF SCIENCE FICTION
> Forthcoming Spring 2007
Is this a historical dictionary with citations of first use?
Fred Shapiro
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press
Yale Law School ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu http://quotationdictionary.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list