slight antedatings: "rupestrian"/ "rupestral"

Jesse Sheidlower jester at PANIX.COM
Mon Nov 16 17:19:55 UTC 2009


On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 07:13:24PM -0500, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> In the nuance of "painted or inscribed on rocks or cave walls."  Customary
> usage had applied only to growing things.
>
> OED's 1896 ex. appears earlier in _Science_, Feb. 9, 1894, p. 81.  The same
> journal a year earlier (Feb. 24, 1893), p. 104, has "The rupestrian writing
> is of much more uncertain age."
>
> "Rupestral" :
>
> 1888 Sir Robert Lambert Playfair _A Bibliography of Algeria_ (London: J.
> Murray) 212: He...discovered several rupestral inscriptions.

This has gotten through the first pass from our researchers,
and we now have dates of 1800 for _rupestrian_ and 1847 for
_rupestral_.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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