[Ads-l] "dumpster diver" -- early, but is it an antedating?

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Mon Nov 30 00:09:02 UTC 2015


Peter,

Are you thinking that the Google Books record is for a single issue?  It seems clear to me that the record is for a seven-year period, and we don't know at all where within the seven-year period the "dumpster diver" occurrence falls.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Peter Morris [peter_morris_1 at BLUEYONDER.CO.UK]
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2015 6:57 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "dumpster diver" -- early, but is it an antedating?

Fred, I know how unreliable Google dating is. But did you follow my second link?

Searching the issue for '1985'  showed 3 out of 90 results.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__tinyurl.com_ozlto7a&d=AwIFAw&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=sRkhHMQo6W5Ird1lkQFqb23bCfSHAR2XjUSUG53db5M&m=zOcVPSm1aVEQFisWvbtJdzCCofwWmD9GOUYxlIRU3OI&s=3ZHsn0pzbX2SqyGtNDfS7HP17HvGZIiTCJVTtvAPPVE&e=

This is why I think it's an antedating:

The first is the issue's masthead, with a dating "winter into spring 1985" which sounds like early in the year.

The second is an advert accepting bookings for an event to take place on June 29th 1985.
Can we reasonably assume that publication was at least a few weeks pror to that?

The third is an article saying that someone has been working in a position since 1985.
That's a bit of a puzzler, but I suspect it's a typo.

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