LOL (1989)

[victor steinbok]

Note that the OED does not offer "smilie" as a variant spelling--and
none of the cites examples there contain it. There is "smiley face" 2.
(1988 NYT) and "smiley" 1. (1987 ChiTrib) for the emoticon. The same
spelling exists for the other two entries as well (for the ubiquitous
yellow "happy" icon--e.g., see http://goo.gl/2G9FF for both "smilie"
and "smilie face") ["Smiley" also appears to be one of the local names
for Chinook or king salmon, but that's another story entirely.]

In fact, this is the spelling I encountered more commonly in private
communication but not in print--the OCLC and the book I noted above
are the only ones I found so far that use this particular spelling.
Well, not quite. The problem is finding these among all the cites for
name "Smilie", which ranges from an Anti-Federalist writer to a
Republican Congressman in the early 1980s (both named John).

A few more, after an exhaustive scan through 460 hits (1400 raw) for
1979-1990: http://goo.gl/zz2cu (Smilie button); http://goo.gl/Sv2lt
("smilie" stickers--but, in this case, the frown-face);
http://goo.gl/ECoXu (smilie face); http://goo.gl/KlQQP (smilie
sticker); http://goo.gl/ixB7D (smilie-flower--actual California
flower, not a drawing of a flower with a smiley face)

This is the entirety of GB hits for the period, but periodicals would
have a lot more. Straight Google search gets 13M raw ghits, although
many would be proper names. And the first page has 12 hits for
emoticons and yellow smiley faces with only 3 others. Of on-line
dictionaries, it appears, only Wiktionary list "smilie" as a variant
of "smiley". Wordnik has more examples.

VS-)

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
...
>
> Cite: 1990 August, OCLC Micro, What's a Smilie?, Page 31, Volume 6,
> Number 4, OCLC Online Computer Library Center. (Google Books snippet;
> Verified on paper)
...

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