Yet Further Antedating of "Restaurant"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Victor,

I should add that I have also used legal databases to search for quotations and proverbs.  Legal databases were among the many online sources I used in compiling The Yale Book of Quotations, and I used Lexis and Westlaw a lot in compiling the Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Shapiro, Fred [fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 9:12 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Yet Further Antedating of "Restaurant"

Victor,

Perhaps other people have been neglecting legal sources for antedatings, but I've been searching Lexis since 1978 for antedatings.  In fact, the first use of any online database for historical lexicography was by me, searching Lexis for the earliest usage of the word "mootness," in 1978.  Since then, I have also used Westlaw, HeinOnline, Making of Modern Law, Justis, and various congressional and parliamentary databases extensively to find antedatings.  The latest edition of Black's Law Dictionary has 10,000 dates of first use supplied by me based almost entirely on database searching.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of victor steinbok [aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 8:56 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Yet Further Antedating of "Restaurant"

Well, you got me beat. I was just about to post a 1820 cite from
Plaifair's Real France, Not Lady Morgan's France (or something to that
effect--I am on a very slow connection today so I can't verify
quickly). There is one quirk about the book--the title page says 1820,
but several catalogs say 1819. I was going to get back to it tomorrow,
but thought I should mention it now since you already have a 1819
cite.

I also have a couple of possible 1815 and 1818 cites, but I need more
time to verify them (24 hours)--unless someone gets to them first.

There are also some 18th century citations, but these don't really
count as they are dictionaries. Well, that's true in most cases, but
one is an Italian-English dictionary and I have not been able to
verify which side has the right entry (or, possibly a French
definition of one of the entries). In any case, dictionaries may have
to set up the cultural environment, but they don't count in
antedating.

There is also some duality in the dictionaries. Some only have the
translation as "restorative", others give a more eleborate explanation
that seems to suggest the modern sense of "restaurant".

I do have a question--is there any reason why so many people are
focusing on periodicals without checking the books? I am often guilty
of going the other way, although it's been made a lot easier to cover
both bases since I discovered that Boston PL network has access to
EAN.

Still one area remains completely unexplored--not just for the
individual words that have been coming through ADS-L all this time,
but also for proverbs, quotations, etc.--and, as far as I can tell,
most dictionaries don't follow in this direction either. Quite often
what does not appear in periodicals, other than slang, may well pop up
in legal documents and opinions. So it is worth searching early (and
no so early for other words, expressions and quotations) through Lexis
and/or WestLaw for early American and British court reporters and/or
Kluwer's collection of European documents (mostly British, of course).

VS-)

On 3/13/10, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> And even earlier:
>
> 1819 _Times_ (London) 3 June 1 (Times Digital Archive)  (advertisement)  TO
> be SOLD, the LEASE of a superb HOTEL-GARNI, with a Restaurant [Restauraut?]
> in the interior, situated in the most fashionable part of Paris, and
> frequented by English families of the first distinction.
>
>
> Fred Shapiro

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