blurb (antedating 1907 May 16)

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:29 PM +0100 8/5/10, Michael Quinion wrote:
>Garson O'Toole wrote:
>
>>  Perhaps someone now has direct evidence of the book jacket. A scan
>>  would be great, but I have not come across it yet. Apparently 1914 is
>>  still the earliest date of direct evidence. So here is a cite in 1907:
>
>I have some notes on it, including a reproduction of the original book
>jacket from the Library of Congress Printed Ephemera Collection:
>
>    http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-blu1.htm
>
That's great.  As it happens (not ironically!), I had just been
reading Chapter 22 ("Fluctuation in the frequency of forms") of
Bloomfield's _Language_ yesterday when the initial query on "blurb"
came up, and while I was actually looking for his remarks on word
loss through homonymy and taboo avoidance, I was struck by this
passage on p. 393:

"We can actually name the speakers who first used the words
_chortle_, _kodak_, and _blurb_; since the moment of that first use,
each of these words has become common. The disappearance of a form
cannot be observed at first hand..."

But in fact although this is clear for "chortle" ('A factitious word
introduced by the author of Through the Looking-Glass', as the OED
puts it) and "blurb" (see above), I'm less certain about the case for
"kodak" as a *verb* (or a common noun), as opposed to the initial
(upper-case) product itself, whose dubbing does indeed involve 'An
arbitrary word invented by Mr. G. Eastman for trade-mark purposes'
(OED).  But as an English *word* rather than product trade-name, the
initial usage must remain elusive; the OED has a cite from 1895 for
'a photograph taken with a Kodak' and 1892 for 'to photograph with a
Kodak', the first steps on the road to lower-casing and genericide,
before the rise of competition led these to obsolesce, along with
"kodaker", "kodakist", "kodakry", etc.  I guess it's back to that
conundrum, "what is a word?"  (Any thoughts, Ron?)

LH

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