[Ads-l] "Jazz" Dating in Merriam-Webster

[Shapiro, Fred]

Jesse's explanation makes sense, thanks to him for pointing it out.

I should correct what I said about it not being crazy to regard Ben Henderson's usage as a coincidental separate word.  That would be pretty crazy in view of Henderson being on the West Coast, many of the other early citations of "jazz" coming from a baseball context, and the semantic similarity of a lively pitch to other citations in the sense of "energy."

Fred Shapiro

________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2024 8:50 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Jazz" Dating in Merriam-Webster

The dates given in MW are the earliest dates of the senses that are _included in the dictionary_. MW doesn't include the 'pep' sense; their earliest sense is one that is first attested in 1913.

But I do not have an explanation of why they put the 'music' sense as sense 1, instead of their usual practice of ordering senses historically.

Jesse Sheidlower

On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 12:44:01PM +0000, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> I guess there is one reasonable explanation for Merriam-Webster's 1913 dating for "jazz."  Are they rejecting the Ben Henderson baseball usage of 1912, i.e., do they feel that that was a coincidental use, not the same word as the West Coast slang usage of 1913 for which we have so much evidence ?  That is a minority theory, but not a crazy one.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ________________________________
> From: Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2024 8:33 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: "Jazz" Dating in Merriam-Webster
>
> I have great respect for the quality of Merriam-Webster's lexicography.  But I am surprised to notice that their dating for the word "jazz" is 1913.  It has been 21 years since George Thompson unearthed "jazz" in 1912, the word is of the highest order of importance, and the 1912 occurrence has received a lot of publicity.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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