"the apocryphal HDAS III"

Tue Aug 3 18:17:43 UTC 2010

Thanks, Fred.

I appreciate the notion that I myself am somehow an honorable
exception to an otherwise prevailing undernourishment of OED's
American coverage (or even an active anti-US editorial bias).
But, in fact, the OED is extremely interested in American
English. I am just a part of a much wider collaborative
enterprise that is designed to accurately cover the meaning
and development of every sense, worldwide. In particular I
think that our coverage of recent American English is very
good (I might point to our revised entry for _rock_ v. as an
example of this, various aspects of which we've discussed on
this list). In addition, the fact that many of our principal
research tools (ProQuest, Google Books, Nexis, Questia,
NewspaperArchive, etc.) are weighted heavily towards American
English means that on balance, US usage will be well
represented in revised quotation paragraphs even for terms
that are not exclusively American.

At the same time, though, I must point out that the OED is a
dictionary of general English, not a dictionary of every
regional variety of English. Thus, aspects of cultural history
or transmission that may indeed be extremely interesting (such
as the spread of British subcultural vocabulary in
mid-nineteenth-century America) may not be exhaustively
treated in the dictionary.

When deciding how to include quotations, the first American
example would be something we'd consider along with many other
factors (date range reflected, typicality of usage, context,
etc.); I spoke about this in a paper at DSNA in Chicago a few
years ago. But it is true that, on the whole, we would not
make special efforts to include the first American example (or
the first Australian, South African, Irish, etc. example) of a
term that's originally British. It is not that it is an
uninteresting question, it is just beyond our scope.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

On Mon, Aug 02, 2010 at 10:50:45AM -0400, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> I'm not sure where George gets the assertion that "the chief editors of the OED aren't interested in documenting American English."  My impression is that Jesse Sheidlower spends his time in documenting American English, and that many of the citations in the revised OED come from American sources.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of George Thompson [george.thompson at NYU.EDU]
> Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 10:16 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: "the apocryphal HDAS III"
>
> This raises a very galling point: how long do we have to wait for Oxford University Press to bring out the final volumes of HDAS?  If I thought that the material JL has gathered for it would someday be incorporated in the OED, I might be content.  But it's clear that the chief editors of the OED aren't interested in documenting American English, except in so far as a word's first appearance is in an American source.
> Slang is a very useful indication of thought and habits, but it's hard to study, without a source like HDAS.  10 years ago or so, Gerry Cohen kindly published a collection of prize-fighting slang I had gathered from NYC newspapers, 1817-1835.  This included a few absolute antedatings of the in-print OED which if they hold up will make the revised OED, but otherwise I expect them to wind up on the copy-hook.  But the collection was interesting because it showed that the fad for prize-fighting among raffish English noblemen passed very quickly to the United States, despite the War of 1812 and the embargo that preceded it.  Other aspects of cultural and social history can be studied in an extensive collection of dated slang material
>
> The OUP needs to stop sitting on the material for HDAS III & IV and produce them, or I will start remembering it in my bed-time curses, along with the despised Bertelsmann House.
>
> What can the collective might of ADS-L do to bring this about -- in addition to our collective bed-time curses, of course
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Date: Monday, August 2, 2010 7:44 am
> Subject: Re: Submariner [was "thousand-yard stare"] (UNCLASSIFIED)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > George, see the apocryphal HDAS III.  For some reason in the U.S. it's
> > "piss" that the designee cannot pour from the boot.  Even if the boot
> > has a
> > instructions *and* a spout.
> >
> > Just a cultural thing, I guess.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 10:38 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:
> >
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > > -----------------------
> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> > > Subject:      Re: Submariner [was "thousand-yard stare"] (UNCLASSIFIED)
> > >
> > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > There is a put-down that I think I saw in Brendan Behan's Borstal
> > Boy, that
> > > someone was too dumb to pour sand out of a boot, even if the instructions
> > > were printed on the heel.
> > >
> > > GAT
> > >
> > > George A. Thompson
> > > Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> > > Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > > Date: Sunday, August 1, 2010 8:56 pm
> > > Subject: Re: Submariner [was "thousand-yard stare"] (UNCLASSIFIED)
> > > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > >
> > > > At 8:38 PM -0400 8/1/10, Mark Mandel wrote:
> > > > >I have a pair of Dockers brand pants, less than a year old, that
> > have
> > > > "ONE
> > > > >LEG AT A TIME" printed in red letters an inch high on the inside
> > of the
> > > > >waistband, right front.
> > > > >
> > > > >m a m
> > > >
> > > > Not quite rising to the level of the apocryphal Coke bottles in (pick
> > > > a country) with the legend on the bottom reading "OPEN OTHER END",
> > > > but...
> > > >
> > > > LH
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >>  I remember a manual for US Army chemical officers (officers, not
> > > enlisted)
> > > > >>  that detailed all the tasks that a chemical officer needed to
> > > > know. The one
> > > > >>  for donning chemical protective gear included instructions
> > such as
> > > > "put on
> > > > >>  pants one leg at a time, fly facing front." The only non-intuitive
> > > > step in
> > > > >>  the task that actually required some instruction was lacing the
> > > chemical
> > > > >>  protective overboots--which were not like standard boots--and
> > the
> > > > >>  instruction for that was simply "lace boots."
> > > > >>
> > > > >>  I'm convinced it was written by a captain who had been passed
> > over
> > > > for
> > > > >>  promotion and was exacting a bit of revenge.
> > > > >>
> > > > >
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> >
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