OMG

[Dave Wilton]

I don't recall Read's articles containing OMG and a search of American
Speech on JSTOR doesn't turn it up.

The Daily News article seems to simply be relying on the OED, which has the
1917 letter as the first citation. The OED entry is from March 2004, so it's
hardly a new discovery. The next citation is an adjectival use of OMG from
1982. Making the 1917 use something of an outlier. Although given the
penchant people have for creating initialisms, it seems plausible that OMG
was independently coined on numerous occasions, and I wouldn't be surprised
if earlier (and later) ones showed up.



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Laurence Horn
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 1:19 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: OMG

On Dec 5, 2012, at 12:20 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:

> Daily News claims first use of OMG to Lord Fisher in 1917 letter to
Winston
> Churchill:
>
>
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/11/world-war-i-admiral-to-wi
nston-churchill-%E2%80%98omg%E2%80%99-literally
>

Can we be sure that the U.S. newspaper fad from the 1830s that gave us
"O.K." (and at least one instances of alphanumeric "b4") never included an
instance of "O.M.G." with this sense?  (I can't locate my ADS volume that
contains reprints of the relevant A. W. Read papers on O.K. and the fad.)

LH

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