Words from Popular Literature Not in OED

[Alice Faber]

Fred Shapiro wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
>>> "Some of the contributors to this thread seem to be
>>> unaware that the word existed before Frank Herbert."
>>>
>>> Exactly so, Mark. I didn't quite have the 'nads to state it so clearly
>>> and so concisely. :-)
>>
>> I don't want to speak for any of the other contributors to the
>> thread, but I'd still be pretty sure that _everyone_ who has
>> contributed knows that _melange_ 'mixture' has been around for
>> many centuries before Frank Herbert. The issue Fred was
>> raising, it seems to me, is whether the specific _sense_ of
>> _melange_ found in _Dune_ ("the fictional spice-drug central
>> to the Dune series", as Wikipedia has it) belongs in OED.
>
> Thanks, Jesse.  I thought it was obvious that I was talking about a
> specific sense of a word.  If I had used the example "precious" from Lord
> of the Rings (an even more prominent illustration of a term from a modern
> literary work that is not included in OED) would the people with gonads
> have thought that I meant that the word "precious" was coined by Tolkien?
>

Speaking as someone who has no memory of ever having read Dune, I had
absolutely no clue that this word was used in Dune in a non-intuitive
special sense. So, I couldn't imagine that y'all were discussing
anything other than the general sense of the word, even though it seemed
passing strange to me that it was that recent.

--
 =============================================================================
Alice Faber                                    faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                           tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                        fax (203) 865-8963

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org