avuncular (1823)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

My latest Word Routes column is on two words closely tied to Walter
Cronkite, "avuncular" and "anchorman":

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1920/

The "anchorman" part is a followup to my Slate piece from over the
weekend. As for "avuncular", I mention this early cite, antedating
OED's 1831:

1823 James Smith in _Monthly Rev._ V(25):38 'I take,' continued Mr.
Robert Robertson, 'an avuncular interest in all that concerns you.'

So is it just a coincidence that "avuncular" appears in the January
1823 _Monthly Review_ and "materteral" shows up in the September 1823
issue (from a different author)? Was the _Monthly Review_ the go-to
journal for whimsical kinship-based neo-Latinisms?


--Ben Zimmer

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