"Unring" Not in OED

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 04:14:31PM +0000, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
> This is helpful, Jesse, and
> As a devoted user, I am all for inclusiveness & delighted that you intend to add "unring."
>
>
>  I know that this is a subject that was much discussed in pr
> e-internet days, but I'm wondering how (if at all) the
> now-indefinitely large size of OED changes anything. Seems
> to me a topic ripe for a DICTIONARIES article.

The short answer is "not very much". Despite the (lack of)
space restrictions in online publication, we're still editing
by print standards, for several reasons, chief among which are
that we do hope to publish OED3 in print form (and won't want
to have to go through and re-edit it to cut it down to size);
and that editing takes time, bibliographical checking takes
time, everything takes time, and therefore money. Oh, and that
just throwing in everything we come across would make the
dictionary unbalanced (this criticism is rejected by some, for
example some Wikipedia partisans, who think that more info is
always better, balance be damned).

> I'm also wondering just what "currency" means--you cite age
> as important, but "unring" has not been around very long &
> 69,000 Google hits is not really a lot, especially if (as
> Larry says) the cliche (I resist calling it a proverb) is
> largely confined to legal contexts and is thus jargony.

69K Googlits isn't an extreme amount, but it's certainly in
the respectability ballpark. I defer to Fred Shapiro on its
importance in legal usage, but I'm certainly familiar with the
proverb/cliche and thus it's unlikely to be _that_ restricted.

> You don't mention likelihood of survival and productivity as
> criteria--hard to estimate, I know, but surely relevant. I'd
> agree that "You can't unring a bell" is likely to be around
> for a while, but I wonder if it will spread to other
> environments (e.g., "The fat lady can,t unsing the last
> song," "You can't unfuck a deflowered virgin"-though maybe
> "you can't unconfess your crime"), though my guess is that
> "unsay" in pretty much this same sense has been around for a
> long time (You can't unsay an insult") . Maybe "unring" is
> an extensuon of that? In which case "unsay" would be a good
> place to add "unring" in the updated OED?

Yes, OED2 shows _unsay_ 'to withdraw or retract (something
said or written)' to the late fifteenth century.

The other (hypothetical) examples you cite seem to me to be
independent of this proverb; that is, I'd probably assume
these were independent coinages along the same principles
(principles shown for many centuries, if _unsay_ is a guide),
rather than snowclones.

By the way, your mailer has your return address set to you
personally, rather than the list, which means that some people
are likely to miss this fact, and reply to you only.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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