OED's "rum" -- perhaps 1651?; and its misattributions to "Franklin's" Drinkers Dictionary

[Jonathan Lighter]

It's just too hard to keep track of this stuff.

The brain is too small.

JL

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: OED's "rum" -- perhaps 1651?; and its misattributions to
>              "Franklin's" Drinkers Dictionary
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The "perhaps 1651" in the Subject line is due to my carelessness.  It
> should have been deleted, since the 1651 quotation is for
> "rumbullion" -- and in the OED.
>
> JB
>
> At 3/24/2011 02:00 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >In the latest OED newsletter I find --
> >
> >A)  an article on rum, saying:
> >
> >"The word <http://oed.com/view/Entry/168746>rum is first recorded in
> >1654 in the Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, where it is
> >mentioned along with another of its names
> ><http://oed.com/view/Entry/103374>kill-devil:
> >        Berbados Liquors, commonly called Rum, Kill Deuill, or the like"
> >
> >Has anyone looked into the early records of Massachusetts or
> >Boston?  Much the more active port at the time, I'm sure, than
> >Saybrook.  (The Colony of Connecticut did not merge with New Haven
> >until 1665.)
> >
> >
> >B)  under Latest update / Figures of speech:
> >
> >"The vocabulary of drunkenness is immense, and has been since at
> >least the time of the famous Drinker's Dictionary (1737) in Benjamin
> >Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette. To that vast lexicon we now add ..."
> >
> >But every word or expression in Franklin's dictionary was published 6
> >months earlier, in the New England Weekly Journal of July 6,
> >1736.  See "The Source for Benjamin Franklin's 'The Drinkers
> >Dictionary' ...", _American Speech_, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Summer 2006), by
> >... moi.  The OED's quotations from "Franklin's" Drinkers Dictionary
> >are under dagged, king['s English] (both interdatings), and fence and
> >Virginia (earliest quote for "Virginia fence").
> >
> >Joel
> >
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