an antedating "how to"?

[W Brewer]

I think this is a lovely discussion. But you are putting Beth Young's
students up against The Big Guns. They're gonna lose, guys. Offline, I
described to Beth my attempts to fire up my students with the fun of word
chasing, which didn't pan out either, but I had somewhat different goals.
It was to ask students to investigate English borrowings into their
(non-English) mother tongue. In a U.S. context, Beth's students could
pursue English borrowings into another language, preferably one in their
own ethnic background. (N.b., not foreign loans into English.) Maybe
working in the roots angle could get better results. Then, if any students
survived this test, recruit them for the OED updating game. I am not
optimistic.

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