[Ads-l] antedating mundane

[Jeff Prucher]

I would probably read that as the standard "ordinary, everyday" meaning of "mundane" -- the author is contrasting the weird/fantastic elements of the stories, which Lovecraft is most known for, with the realistic aspects of the stories, which are not given as much notice.




On Monday, May 18, 2020, 06:35:27 PM PDT, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote: 





So, a term for the complement of the presupposed subset, like “straight” or “gentile”. Who knew?


> On May 18, 2020, at 9:14 PM, Bill Mullins <amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> The OED SF Project has 1950 for the genre sense of "mundane" (adj.) (the OED has 1955).
> 
> _The Acolyte_ Summer 1944 p.14
> https://archive.org/details/TheAcolyte07V02n031944Summer/page/n17/mode/1up/<https://archive.org/details/TheAcolyte07V02n031944Summer/page/n17/mode/1up/search/hugo>
> "And on top of it all, [H. P. Lovecraft] did create remarkably faithful and sound mundane backgrounds and personalities."
> (Typically, "mundane" would be "that which is not SF"; here it is "that which is not weird".)
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org