anachronism watch

[Joel S. Berson]

In a TV presentation (2000) of "Lady Audley's Secret", by Mary
Elizabeth Braddon, published in 1862 (called by Wikipedia "a
sensation novel"), I heard one character referred to as a
"gold-digger".   I was suspicious.  The OED dates it from 1920 -- and
calls it "orig. U.S." to boot.  I bought and read the book, but I
didn't find it.

Joel

At 5/5/2012 11:06 AM, Amy West wrote:
>On 5/5/12 9:51 AM, Amy West wrote:
>>
>>I heard "cramp my style" in the recently aired Little Dorrit
>>dramatization on PBS and that struck me as too modern. OED has a
>>bracketed 1819 use from Charles Lamb's letters that wasn't pub'd until
>>1935, but nothing else until 1917. So, now I have to go and look at
>>Little Dorrit and see if Dickens really used it or if it was Andrew
>>Davies, the screen writer.
>And a quick and dirty search of Little Dorrit in GoogleBooks reveals
>that "cramp [one's] style" ain't in there, so it was Davies messing
>around. Sigh.
>
>---Amy West
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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