prophe(s/c)y again

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 10/24/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> At 7:28 AM -0700 10/24/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> >ah, but we've been *here* before.  from Fred Shapiro, 3/26/05:
> >Despite having over 11,000 Google hits and being used  prominently in
> >Bob Dylan's landmark 1964 song "The Times They Are A-Changin'," the
> >word _prophesize_ is still not in OED or Merriam-Webster.
> >
> >and Jesse Sheidlower pointed out that it was in the OED, under
> >"prophecize".  now in 2007, the OED entry is for "prophesize", with
> >variant spellings: 18- prophecise, 18- prophesise, 18- prophesize,
> >19- prophecize.
> >
> And, as I learned before posting on "prophesize", the OED entry
> includes the Dylan line (along with a "prophecise" from 1816 and a
> "prophesize" from 1895).

Sadly, though, OED doesn't include another lexical oddity from Dylan's
1964 output, the eggcorn "scrapegoat" as used in "Ballad in Plain D"
("The constant scrapegoat, she was easily undone / By the jealousy of
others around her"). This would be difficult to include, actually,
since it appears as "scapegoat" in the published lyrics.

--Ben Zimmer

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