[Lexicog] Phrasefinder

[Shapiro, Fred]

Grant has studied phrases.org.uk more than I have, so I accept his statement that the quality is very variable.  But there is definitely good original research there, and it is worth consulting along with other research tools.  For example, I just looked up "a picture is worth a thousand words."  I did a lot of research on this for The Yale Book of Quotations and pushed it back from the usually accepted coinage by Frederick Barnard in the 1920s to a 1914 appearance in the New York Times.  But Phrasefinder, apparently searching Newspaperarchive or Google News Archive, gives a 1911 citation from a Syracuse newspaper.  This is a major phrase discovery.  I assume there are other entries at this level, and in perusing the site I found very good research, of a sort that only a small number of people in the world would even think to do, in many entries.

Fred Shapiro
Editor
Yale Book of Quotations (Yale University Press)



________________________________________
From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com [lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Grant Barrett [gbarrett at worldnewyork.org]
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 6:10 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog]  Phrasefinder

The quality of the scholarship at Phrases.org.uk is so variable that
confirming an answer given there is an exercise in just going ahead
and doing the research yourself.

The site is interesting in that it occasionally touches upon
expressions not well-covered elsewhere but by and large, outside the
scant 1200 entries that are provided by the site, the content is
almost exclusively made up of a forum where the clueless answer
questions asked by the clueless.

One is far more likely to find a satisfactory answer by searching
Google Books or Amazon's full-text search. Or better, visiting a
library.

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
113 Park Place, Apt. 3
Brooklyn, NY 11217
(646) 286-2260

>
> Every once in a while we get an inquiry on this list about the
> meaning of
> some phrase or idiom, which engenders a particularistic reply (or
> multiple
> replies). I have been impressed with the judicious and historically
> interesting work of Gary Martin, whose Phrasefinder online source is
> very
> impressive. Unless others have other opinions about this source, I'd
> like
> to suggest that we simply routinely refer basic inquiries to this
> site:
>
>     http://www.phrases.org.uk/


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