"Rule of thumb" (1685)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2007 at 09:13:22PM -0400, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2007, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
> >>The datings in the Random House dictionaries are speculative.
> >
> >That's a little misleading. The date ranges in the RH
> >dictionaries are meant to suggest that the coinage date is not
> >something that can be quantified exactly, i.e. that the first
> >known quotation is probably not the coinage. Giving a date
>
> I understand the theory behind the RH dates, but I believe it gives most
> readers a false sense that RH knows somehow that the word was coined in
> that date range, whereas in fact it is a standardized guess they make for
> every word that may be way off.  To me a note in the front matter would
> make more sense than this misleading standardized guess.
>
> Over the years I have had many people tell me that the OED is wrong
> because RH gives an earlier dating for a word.

I'm not defending it, just pointing out what the intention was. But
for what it's worth, I've also had a lot of people tell me how
wrong Merriam-Wester is for believing that a word was "coined" in
the year they list in their etymologies.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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