to vet

[Dan Goncharoff]

I can only see a use referring to job candidates in 1987.

DanG


On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      to vet
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>
> I've always found this verb a little curious and even annoying.  I
> first encountered it in 1981. OED has it from Kipling in its current
> sense and it's apparently been in British use steadily since then.  All the
> cites are British or (evidently in one case ) Canadian.  The documentation
> ends in 1978 and none are from the U.S.
>
> Since I first heard it, it's become part of the core political vocabulary.
> Is it true that to "vet" (candidates, for example, or news reports, or
> documents) only entered U.S. English around 1980?  Was there a particlular
> "vet vector"?  (Presumably not "Lex Luthor," whose name I had to work in
> here.)
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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