Fictional Materials for OED

[William Salmon]

I was pleased to see a draft entry included for "muggle" from the Harry Potter stories. I didn't know, however, that a muggle could also be a fish tale, a young woman, or a marijuana cigarette.


-----Original Message-----

> Date: Sat Jan 02 19:21:13 PST 2010
> From: "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Fictional Materials for OED
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Fictional Materials for OED
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It is interesting that, from Star Trek, the OED has entries for beam (v.), Klingon (n. and adj.), mind-meld, phaser, photon torpedo, prime directive, warp factor, and warp speed.  Their inclusion may be based on figurative uses outside of Star Trek.
>
> From Star Wars, I see only carbonite and droid.  I can understand ewok and wookiee not being included, but surely "force" in its Lucasian sense should be in OED.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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