Linguistic dark matter

[Shapiro, Fred]

One does a search in Google Books.

Fred Shapiro



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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Cohen, Gerald Leonard [gcohen at MST.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2010 11:26 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Linguistic dark matter

I'm puzzled.  I typed in "shyster" and see some limited use around 1800 and 1820.  But I know from my research  that the term originated in 1843 (I wrote two monographs on the term a while back) .  This is no doubt a basic question: How does one check to see what sources Google cites to back up its presentation of "shyster" being used earlier?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Gerald Cohen

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