"Schrodinger's Cat" not in OED

[victor steinbok]

Here's the entirety of non-attributive "Einstein":

 b. A (usu. mathematical or scientific) genius comparable to Einstein.
Also used iron.

I am not sure the qualifier "usu. mathematical or scientific" is
particularly useful. One common usage is "regular Einstein" or "real
Einstein" that can be replaced with an equivalent "wiz", "wiz kid" or
"wizard", as in, "he's a regular Einstein with cars" (OK, maybe a bit
of a stretch with this example). This might have been generally
restricted to scientific subjects in the past, but "Einstein" has long
entered the popular culture and been applied to all sorts of
expertise.

UD claims its "satyrical" (which would be covered by the "iron."
above), but it's awfully restrictive. In my experience this is true
when a direct address, but not ironic/satyrical at least some of the
time when used in 3rd person. Note, in particular, that it applies to
skills and skill sets, not just "genius" of theoretical or book
knowledge.

Maybe I'm just splitting hairs.

Back to Schroedinger, for a moment. There is an attributive entry for
Schroedinger (with an umlaut, not [oe]), but it also includes
Schroedinger equation and function (and variants), so "cat" also seems
appropriate, although I see all of these as more encyclopedic than
dictionary items. But there is a real unevenness when it comes to such
entries. I've pointed this out with respect to national/language
attributes which are extensive for "English", "French" and "German",
but not "Italian", "Japanese" or "Chinese". It seems that there is a
similar dichotomy with science attributives, although it's less
predictable by [historical] frequency of use.

VS-)

On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 2:43 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oh, my! You just had to look, didn't you?
> VS-)
>
> On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I don't see _Schrodinger's cat_ in OED nor in Merriam-Webster.  Jesse, is there a draft entry for this by OED?
>>
>> Fred Shapiro

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