"Form of Action" Not in OED

[Baker, John]

        If Fred's generalization is true, it's surprising, because the
source materials for legal terms are better than for any other area.
Most important legal opinions are published and dated, there have long
been excellent searchable databases, and the field itself gives an
unusually high level of attention to definitions and etymologies.

        I suppose that the OED editors wrongly assumed that "form of
action" is a transparent collocation and that "pro se" is simply a Latin
term.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Shapiro, Fred
Sent: Monday, July 04, 2011 9:17 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Form of Action" Not in OED

Victor,

Wow.  This omission is even more striking when one realizes that P is in
the part of the alphabet that has been revised by the OED.

In general, law is perhaps the weakest subject area for the OED,
although the 3rd edition is much stronger than the 1st edition for law.
Bryan Garner tried to launch a very ambitious project for an historical
Oxford Law Dictionary some decades ago, but it fell through for lack of
funding.

Fred



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
victor steinbok [aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2011 6:16 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Form of Action" Not in OED

Speaking of legal terms--but with Latin origin--proseity and "per se"
are in
the OED. "Pro se" is not.

VS-)

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
wrote:

>
> I notice that the very important historical legal term "form of
action" is
> not in OED nor in Merriam-Webster.
>
> Fred Shapiro

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