OED editing, antedating peril ephemera, was Re: [ADS-L] The competitive sport of antedating

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>:

> Another media appearance for ADS-Lers... In the Sunday Boston Globe,
> Erin McKean subbed for Jan Freeman, writing about antedating as sport:
>
> http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/10/14/what_came_first/
>
> Discusses antedatings from Barry Popik, Jerry Cohen, Grant Barrett,
> and me, along with unnamed others.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer

Thanks. And she mentions George A. Thompson Jr. and his 1912 jazz find.
Earlier in the article, she wrote of "a dedicated cadre of DIY word-researchers
who don't want to wait for the OED's revision process to get around to
updating the words they're interested in." Now I know that not all proposed
antedatings are interesting--or even all reliable--and that OED has a plan to
review all articles, and can't do everything instantly. But a Boston Globe
reader who goes to the usually-quite-excellent but occasionally quite-mistaken
OED might fairly wonder why that 1912 quotation does not appear, and, also,
that a 1909 quotation (properly?) disputed by--the late--David Shulman
(1912-2004) does appear. Jazz is probably an often-consulted word. (Perhaps the
online hits are recorded).
Isn't that worth an out-of-sequence (and easy) correction (as e.g., Dave Wilton
suggested some time ago)? Or removing the Hoosier 1926 citation that was proven
to be misdated, yet again, in the Indiana Magazine of History? Or in
boondoggle--another oft-consulted word, I'd guess--mentioning the August 14,
1929 Punch article, cited, e.g., by Jon Lighter in Atlantic back in March of
1995? Or simply removing the contradiction in the Poontang entry? Or at
Copacetic, noting that the 1919 author having made it up (spelled copasetic) for
the unique use of Mrs. Lukins is more plausible than those guesses currently
listed? Or re-addressing scholarship for the outdated Element and Nazarene
entries? (E.g., might OED readers prefer to know about the cuneiform tablet
find at Hazor probably mentioning Nazareth?) Or in the Essene entry, instead of
citing a book that was fairly good, that is, for 1864, that listed 19 etymology
proposals--actually, there have been more than 60 different proposals
published--mentioning that only one of these proposals, made first, as far as I
know, by Philip Melanchthon in 1532, has evidently been confirmed in the Dead
Sea Scrolls? Or, at least, that an increasing list of scholars recognize this?

There are plainly some quite smart people working for OED. (There's that
annoyingly-competent...what's his name?) I've made plenty of mistakes, but
perhaps allow me to suggest that asking the public to antedate words for which
OED may have earlier, undisclosed citations already in hand could be
construed by some folk as more officious (as well as less efficient) than
strictly necessary. OED may be missing full advantage of online collaborative
research; a great and wonderful book could be even better edited. A relatively
simple change in editing practice could yield great improvements and speed
contributions to learning. Thanks for your consideration.

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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