[Ads-l] OED lacuna: "Kinsey scale"

[Laurence Horn]

I just came across a reference to the Kinsey scale, which is of course 'A classification system for gauging sexual orientation, designed by Alfred Kinsey, and ranging from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual)’ [—AHD; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale].  That got me to wonder whether Alfred Kinsey himself first called it the Kinsey scale, but there’s no entry in the OED to check.  I know proper names themselves do not get entries in the OED, but derivatives (e.g. “American” as opposed to “America”) do, including eponyms like “Geiger counter”, “Einstein shift”, or for that matter “Richter scale” (which was apparently not so-called by Charles Francis Richter himself).  So “Kinsey scale” is probably just waiting for K’s turn in the revision cycle. My prediction is that Kinsey didn’t call it a Kinsey scale.  Now if it were Trump...

LH
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