OT: Still Earlier Antedating of "Restaurant"

[victor steinbok]

I completely agree with all of this. What is particularly interesting
is that there is absolutely no actual coding for language in older
books--the French and Latin books survive "English only" filter. Of
course, it's pointless to screen out the underlying errors because,
well, they are read as something else--so if GB splits restauratio
into "restaurat" and "in" (or, worse yet, just interprets the whole
thing as "restaurant"), nothing is gained by filtering out
"restauratio".

Unfortunately, this is manual-labour-heavy process. There is no easy
way around it.

But think how much easier it still is than doing all of this by hand!!
No searching capacity, no idea how far back to look, no helpful
WorldCat hints as to the actual identity of the book. I'll take GB as
is, even while grumbling loudly.

VS-)

On 3/14/10, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> At 3/14/2010 10:10 AM, victor steinbok wrote:
>>Depending on the search string, this volume pops up in the third or
>>fourth "ten" (I searched for pre-1823, at first, then pre-1819, but
>>with slightly different prompts).
>
> For pre-1821 (to antedate my earlier example), for me it is on the
> 7th page.  I had given up much earlier.
>
>>There are actually a number of hits
>>in the 1802-1803 period, including at least four copies of The Monthly
>>Magazine for 1803. But, because of slow connection, I only got through
>>the first 50 or so hits, of which more than half are misdated
>>(although many are from 1860s and 1890s instead of 1800s--a very
>>common GB error). Some, like the two you mention are so obvious, they
>>don't need to be checked, of course.
>
> Nor "The writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 9 - Page 105", dated 1803.
>
> But what about "Little Journeys to Hawaii and the Philippine Islands,
> by Marian M. George, dated 1801?  An intrepid early South Seas woman
> explorer?  The copyright page is mysterious... but WorldCat says 1901.
>
> Or Besant's "With Harp and Crown", Bungled as 1800 but actually 1876.
>
> Or "Textbook of Temperance", 1809, where "trembling with suppressed
> agony at the thought of becoming an assassin, he rushed into the
> nearest restaurant," ... but we find it's John Wilkes Booth.
>
> Or in an edition of a translation of the memoirs of Casanova, where
> Bungle Books has picked up a 1797 date from the illustration of an
> earlier title page instead of the publication date of 1922.
>
> Or the innumerable examples of "restauration" being taken as
> "restaurant", plus countless books in Latin (for, at least, the
> "earlier" spelling "restaurat").
>
> It'a a nefarious plot by Google to destroy scholarship by drowning it
> in errata.
>
> Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org