anachronism watch

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> Just finished the aforementioned _Death Comes to Pemberley_, the recent
> (2011) Austenian pastiche by P. D. James in which the planning for an
> annual ball at the estate of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Darcy nee Bennet
> is rudely interrupted by a murder in the woods.  It's not _Pride and
> Prejudice and Zombies_, the slightly less recent best-seller, but it's
> not really Austen.  I found it interesting to see what James, who is an
> intelligent but not always careful writer, would get wrong, since the
> narration as well as the dialogue is clearly intended to be in the
> language of _Pride and Prejudice_ (plus 5 years), thus set in 1803
> (Boney is on the march).
[...]
> (2) "contact" as a verb, as in the same passage above; this is a
> frequent bugaboo of prescriptivists, so it was especially surprising
> that it pops up here.  The OED entry not only fails to antedate 20th
> century uses, but makes it clear, with Wodehouse's help, that it was
> still seen as an Americanism as late as 1936, as well as being too
> colloquial for the language of the novel:
> 3. trans. To get into contact or in touch with (a person). orig. U.S.
> colloq.
> 1936   P. G. Wodehouse Laughing Gas ix. 95   The prospect whom I was
> planning to contact, as they call it in America, was leaning back in the
> arm-chair.

Good stuff, Larry. "Contact" as a verb was one of the anachronisms I
discussed from Season 2 of "Downton Abbey":

http://b.globe.com/downtonzimmer
http://bit.ly/vtdownton

Previously discussed by Nancy Friedman:

http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2012/01/to-contact-in-1918.html

...but placing it in 1918 is just a minor offense compared to 1803.

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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