Antedating of "selfie"

[Ben Zimmer]

For Slate's Lexicon Valley blog, I've written about this week's media
frenzy over "selfie" -- giving credit to our own Hugo for finding the
2002 cite that has taken on a life of its own:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2013/11/22/selfie_etymology_an_australian_man_takes_a_photo_of_his_lip_after_falling.html


On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 11:46 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
> ABC News (Australia) tracked down Nathan "Hopey" Hope, the man behind
> the 2002 "selfie" cite:
>
> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-21/modern-selfies-not-in-the-spirit-of-the-thing-says/5107152
>
> Hope says, "It was not a word I coined. It's something that was just
> common slang at the time, used to describe a picture of yourself.
> Fairly simple."
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 1:26 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > And now there are entire articles about the citation...
> >
> > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10459115/Australian-man-invented-the-selfie-after-drunken-night-out.html
> >
> > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 9:50 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> > >
> > > With "selfie" being named Oxford's Word of the Year, the 2002 cite
> > > discovered by Hugo is getting a lot of attention...
> > >
> > > http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/11/word-of-the-year-2013-winner/
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 4:52 AM, Hugo <hugovk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> "Selfie" has been added to Oxford Dictionaries Online in today's August quarterly update (not yet in OED):
> > >> http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/august-2013-update/
> > >>
> > >> ODO, "early 21st century":
> > >> http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/selfie
> > >>
> > >> Urban Dictionary, 29 July 2009:
> > >> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Selfie&defid=4142844
> > >>
> > >> ---
> > >>
> > >> The earliest I found is in ABC Online Forum (Dr. Karl's Self-Service Science), 13 September 2002:
> > >>
> > >> [Begin excerpt]
> > >> From: Hopey ®   13/09/2002 15:19:29
> > >> Subject: re: Dissolvable stitches       post id: 169902
> > >> Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.
> > >> [End excerpt]
> > >>
> > >> Source: http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/archives/archive32/newposts/169/topic169861.shtm
> > >>
> > >> The date looks plausible, the oldest in the Internet Archive is 2004: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20040117090107/http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/archives/archive32/newposts/169/topic169861.shtm
> > >>
> > >> Here's the selfie: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20040118000958/http://mcs.une.edu.au/~nhope/lip.jpg
> > >>
> > >> Oh, and the EXIF information embedded in the photo file is also dated 13th September 2002.

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