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

[Dave Wilton]

Going beyond simply correcting known errors faster, a neat feature would be
inclusion of "unedited" citations in the online edition. A button, similar
to the one that displays the 2nd Edition entry, could display
unedited/unverified citations when the reader requests. You could even have
a comment feature where readers could send in or comment on citations by
clicking through. (Probably not public comments, given the nature of the
OED, but ones that go directly to a database for consideration by the
editors when they get to that word in the revision cycle. Make submitting
citations and corrections easier.)

This would be a fair amount of work to implement and maintain (and I imagine
that it's probably not practical to put every citation in the Oxford
database online--some I understand are still on paper slips), but it could
end up generating more material and saving effort in the long run by
engaging a wider group in helping with the editing. And you'd still maintain
quality control by having the "official" edited entry. And it would make the
dictionary more valuable by pointing researchers to citations that they
otherwise might miss--they'd have to verify them themselves, of course.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Stephen Goranson
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 4:35 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: OED editing, antedating peril ephemera, was Re: [ADS-L] The
competitive sport of antedating

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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org