"detectorist" / "detectionist"

[George Thompson]

JSB: From an email message today:  "My husband lost his planting trees about fifteen years ago and a metal detectorist failed to find it."

I suppose this is to be punctuated as
"My husband lost his, planting trees, about fifteen years ago, and a metal detectorist failed to find it."

and not "My husband lost his planting-trees about fifteen years ago, and a metal detectorist failed to find it."

Thus punctuated by those of us who love commas and hyphens, that is.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 11:25 am
Subject: "detectorist" / "detectionist"
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

>  From an email message today:  "My husband lost his planting trees
> about fifteen years ago and a metal detectorist failed to find it."
>
> "Detectorist" is in the OED, as "A person who engages in
> metal-detecting. Cf. metal detectorist n."
>
> However, my weak eyes and easily deceived brain led me to look for
> "detectionist", which is not in the OED -- but is apparently
> sanctioned in Galveston:
>
> The only result that a search of his name turned up was a description
> of the Galveston Metal Detectionist League's September 2000 meeting,
> at which Redman had been a guest speaker on the topic of "US
> government regulations concerning abandoned property vs. concealed property."
>
> In Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact and Fiction
> - Page 97, by Jake Silverstein - 2010.
>
> Whether this is fact or fiction, whether there is or is not a
> "Galveston Metal Detectionist League," I do not know.
>
> Google Books gives me about 89 hits for "detectionist", some
> indicating that there is a "detectionist thesis" -- and of course
> therefore an "anti-detectionist explanation".  One uses
> "detectionist" as "detective".
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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