[Ads-l] Antedating of "Martian" (Noun)

[Shapiro, Fred]

The OED's first use for _Martian_, n. is dated 1883.  Peter Reitan, on his Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog, has the following antedating:



1877 _Cornhill Magazine_ Oct. 421-22  Thus the light given by the farther of his two moons varies from one two-hundredth to one three-hundredth part of our moon’s.  This part, then, of the Martian moonlight is but small in amount, and certainly cannot go far to compensate the Martians (as compared with us Terrestrials) for their greater distance from the sun.



Fred Shapiro

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