"fairy," OED 4a

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 09:45:38AM -0500, Baker, John wrote:
>         Well, The Century Dictionary thinks Chaucer meant the imaginary
> being sense, not that that proves anything.  I assume that the OED
> considered and rejected this possibility; whatever else their reading
> may have missed, I'm sure they scoured the Canterbury Tales.

Coming late to the discussion with a comment that's useless on
its own, but the recent book _The Ring of Words: Tolkien and
the Oxford English Dictionary_ (written by three OED editors)
does have a discussion of _Faerie_ and _fairy_, both
historically and in reference to Tolkien's use and discussion
of them.

I don't have a copy handy, though, making this message a waste of
electrons. In any case, one small point is that yes, OED knows
about the issue.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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