[Ads-l] Slight Antedating of "Ageism"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Aug 11 21:18:39 UTC 2021


> On Aug 11, 2021, at 5:01 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
> 
> This is only a slight antedating of "ageism," but I believe it is the coinage of the term and thus worth adding to OED.

Nice one.  Yes, as with many coinages or early cites, including analogical formations of this kind, there’s the telltale “halfway house hyphen” as I think of it.  I’ve seen “agism” as well as “ageism”, but the word caught on quickly enough that Butler’s hyphen quickly dropped off.

LH
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> ageism (OED 1969 March)
> 
> 1969 Robert N. Butler in Gerontologist Winter  We shall soon have to consider ... a form of bigotry we now tend to overlook: age discrimination or age-ism, prejudice by one age group toward other age groups.
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> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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



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