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

[Laurence Horn]

> On Feb 14, 2018, at 1:27 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> "Kinsey's scale" is a likely precursor to "Kinsey scale". I searched
> for "Kinsey's scale" in the HathiTrust database and found the
> following match in a book with a 1952 date. However, the book was
> published in multiple editions with different dates, so the 1952 date
> might be incorrect. Hardcopy verification is required.

Seems plausible.  I’m sure you’re right about the chronology; it was probably “Richter’s scale” > “(the) Richter scale” too.  I see Yale has a 1949 copy of the Salter book, so I can probably track that down.  Although who knows, “the Creative Age Press” might not be entirely reliable with their publication dates…

LH
> 
> Year: 1952
> Title: Conditioned reflex therapy; the direct approach to the
> reconstruction of personality.
> Author: Andrew Salter
> Quote Page 278 (match in HathiTrust)
> 
> [Excerpt from Internet Archive copy of Salter text which has a 1949
> date. The publisher seems to be "Creative Age Press" and that seems to
> be the 1949 copyright edition]
> …each history." 5 Most of the men seeking therapy for homosexuality
> will score from 5 to 6 on Kinsey's scale. Were we to use this score as
> a basis, and this too has its weaknesses, 8.0 per cent of the total…
> [End excerpt]
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 1:04 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>> On Feb 14, 2018, at 12:41 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Earliest I see on Google Books (snippet view) is from 1954.
>>> 
>>> ----
>>> https://books.google.com/books?id=LXRqAAAAMAAJ
>>> Edmund Bergler and William S. Kroger, _Kinsey's Myth of Female Sexuality:
>>> The Medical Facts_ (1954), p. 118
>>> Approximately 13 per cent of the males who have had no overt homosexual
>>> contacts after adolescence react erotically to other males. At least
>>> incidental homosexual experiences or reactions (Kinsey scale 1 to 6), over
>>> a minimum period of three years between the ages 16 to 25, have occurred in
>>> 30 per cent of all males.
>>> ----
>>> 
>>> Kinsey just called it the "heterosexual–homosexual rating scale" in _Sexual
>>> Behavior in the Human Male_ (1948).
>> 
>> Yes, I inferred that, but who knows when it was first named in his honor.  Bergler & Kroger seem to presuppose the label rather than propose it in the above passage.
>> 
>> LH
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 10:58 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 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...
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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