[Ads-l] Possible Antedatings of "Geology"

[Shapiro, Fred]

The OED's first use of the word "geology" is dated 1731.

The Wikipedia article about Mikkel Escholt says the following:

His 1657 book Geologia Norvegica is extremely rare; a copy is in Oslo and another in Bergen. Escholt linked earthquakes with volcanoes and used the word "geology" which was also used in an English translation of the book made in 1663 by Daniel Collins<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Collins_(priest)>. The term "geologia" however was never used except in the title to refer to a kind of science of the earth. Further such usage had been made earlier by Philippus Cluver<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Cl%C3%BCver> in a 1619 book Geologia, de Creatione ed Formatione Globi Terrestris in Italian. The English writer Robert Lovell also used the word "geology" in his Pammineralogicon, or, A universal history of mineralls (1661).[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikkel_Escholt#cite_note-1>[2]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikkel_Escholt#cite_note-2>

I have not attempted to check up on the accuracy of Wikipedia here.

Fred Shapiro

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