Correction of "Physicist" in OED

[Jonathan Lighter]

I have experienced the same problem with Google Books.

  When I complained, they responded that they were working on it but we should bear in mind that GB is "still young."

  Awwwwwww....wodda cute widoo guy!

  JL

Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Fred Shapiro
Subject: Re: Correction of "Physicist" in OED
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On Thu, 9 Aug 2007, Stephen Goranson wrote:

> Henrietta Temple: A Love Story By Benjamin Disra=EBli (Paris: Baudry's Eu=
ropean
> Library, 1837) p. 39.
>
> "...yet Dr. Garnet, a chemist and physicist of some note in his day, who
> travelled in the Highlands in 1798, repeats and adopts Pennant's statemen=
t of
> the volcanic origin of the hill...."

As I thought, this is some random error on the part of Google Books. The=
=20
citation actually appears to be from the Transactions of the Glasgow=20
Archaeological Society, post-1868. Google Books often seems to=20
erroneously link a title with content from some other book. The user of=20
Google Books, like the user of Newspaperarchive, has to be more than just=
=20
a searcher, he or she needs to bring a sense of what is plausible and what=
=20
is not plausible to the search. Most results I get on Google Books I=20
reject without a moment's thought because I know it isn't plausible as an=
=20
antedating.

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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