Fictional Materials for OED

[Shapiro, Fred]

The otherwise very excellent historical dictionary _Brave New Words_ seems to have omitted "unobtainium."

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of ADSGarson O'Toole [adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 4:06 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Fictional Materials for OED

NewspaperArchive has an earlier cite

February 27, 1956
Marshall Evening Chronicle
Marshall, Michigan
Washington Scene: George Dixon
Page 6

[Begin excerpt]
The metal is so hard to come by that the scientists have devised a
lugubriously-humorous name for it. They call it “unobtainium.”
[End excerpt]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 3:54 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Fictional Materials for OED
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here is a cite for unobtainium in November 1957 in the same milieu.
>
> Date: November 9, 1957
> Newspaper: Greensboro Record
> Newspaper Location: Greensboro, North Carolina
> Article: Top AF General Describes Metal
> Quote Page: A7
> Column 4
> Database: GenealogyBank
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> DAYTON, Ohio, Nov. 9
> A top Air Materiel Command officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
> has disclosed specifications of the ultimate material sought by the
> Air Force.
>
> He is Maj. Gen. William O. Senter, chief of procurement and
> production, who describes it this way:
>
> "It must be practically weightless, infinitely strong, ...
> ...
>
> "We haven't found this material yet," General Senter says, "but we do
> have a name for it. We call it "unobtainium."
> [End excerpt]
>
> OCR errors are probably present.
> Garson
>
> On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 3:11 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Fictional Materials for OED
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 3:04 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 8:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>> > CNN this a.m.: "The technology does not exist! It's made of unobtainium!"
>>> >
>>>
>>> http://goo.gl/LN7zy6
>>>
>>> "This happens in the genre so often that there is even a generic word for
>>> it: unobtainium."
>>>
>>> Foreward (?) of E[dward] E[lmer] Smith, The Skylark of Space, 1928.
>>
>> That introduction was written in 2001, unfortunately.
>>
>> I wrote about "unobtainium" when the movie "Avatar" came out, and
>> noted that Paul Dickson's "Dictionary of the Space Age" dates it back
>> to 1958, in Woodford Heflin's "Interim Glossary, Aero-Space Terms":
>>
>> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/at-the-movies-airworld-unobtainium/
>>
>> Michael Quinion gives the same cite:
>>
>> http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-uno1.htm
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>> --
>> Ben Zimmer
>> http://benzimmer.com/
>>
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>
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