diary = 'chronological memoir; personal chronicle'

[Joel S. Berson]

If a diary should be contemporaneous and "memoir" is recently suspect
due to endemic lack of truth, don't we need a new word?

Joel

At 10/18/2010 08:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Perhaps some tweaking of the definition is in order, but this is another one
>of those more or less intentionally misleading commercial terms that are
>becoming accepted as normal. At least in the world of commerce.
>
>1978  Richard M. McMurray in _Journal of Southern History_ XLIV (Aug.)
>470: _Soldiering: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull._...Edited by K. Jack
>Bauer....The propriety of calling this work a "diary" must be questioned.
>Although Bull clearly based what he wrote in 1913 on his wartime journal,
>the fact is that the published version was taken from a typescript written
>in 1913. Bauer does not inform the reader...if the original diary is extant.
>
>I have seen more recent exx., esp. in the Vietnam War memoir genre, though I
>can't call them to mind at the moment. If such works differ from ordinary
>memoirs in any way, it is solely because they appear to be scrupulous about
>the precise dates of events.
>
>JL
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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