Words from Popular Literature Not in OED

[Jonathan Lighter]

Dave, your criteria are very similar to mine.  Utility, accuracy, and interest are the prime factors rather than a foolish consistency.

  JL "The Hobgoblin of Little Minds"

Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Dave Wilton
Subject: Re: Words from Popular Literature Not in OED
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I would think the primary reason for including a word that appears nowhere
else except in a major work of literature (major either because it is of
great literary merit or because it is very popular) would be because people
encountering that word in that work would be apt to look it up.

By this measure, I see several criteria that should determine whether such a
word is included in a dictionary:
1) the meaning or usage may not be clear in context
2) the word is not obviously an invention of the author
3) the word is interesting for other reasons (perhaps a variation on another
sense of the word or because it provides etymological evidence for some
other term, e.g., "droog" in A Clockwork Orange, etc.)
4) the importance of the work (literary or popular)

So, "melange" might merit an entry. When I first encountered it in Dune, I
wondered if this was an invention of Herbert and I was not certain if the
word had connotations that I was missing. A listing of another sense of
"melange" that credits Herbert with the coinage might be worthwhile.
"Stillsuit," on the other hand, probably doesn't deserve an entry; the
meaning is clear, it's not etymologically interesting, and it's clearly an
invention of Herbert.

"Brillig" and "slithy" deserve entries even though it's obvious that they
are inventions of Carroll.

"Muggle" might merit an entry pretty much solely on the fact that so many
people read the Potter books and the word can be found in many commentaries
and press pieces about the books.

--Dave Wilton
dave at wilton.net

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Fred Shapiro
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 11:54 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Words from Popular Literature Not in OED

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


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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
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