Hey...this time they are actually asking for our help! If anyone has information on any of these words, you might become part of the OED rewrite!

[Should I remind them about 'epicaricacy?' ]

How amazingly insular! OED seems to think only those in the UK have anything to say. The OED site calls it the B[ritish] B[roadcasting] C[orporation] Wordhunt, and says it is making "an appeal to the nation."

Gee, you'd think the US didn't exist. Is it just possibly or conceivable that some terms may have originated in the US, and that USns might have something to contribute?

How insultingly insular!

Come to think of it, that may be why they have the completely wrong etymology for "political football."

However, they do have American editors, Shu, like Jesse Sheidlhower and Erin McKean. Perhaps there was a call to the American media somewhere, too. I just happened to find this as I was googling for something else.

As a random example of a modern word, I took OED's first definition for 'television'. OED gives 11 cites. Eight of them are from the UK and a ninth from Canada; only two are from the US. The details:

1. 1904 Daily News [presumably of London, England]
   
2. 1907 Sci. Amer. Suppl. [US]
   
3. 1909 Athenæum [London, England]
   
4. 1913 Wireless World [London, England]
   
5. 1926 Glasgow Herald [Scotland]
   
6. 1930 J. BUCKINGHAM, Matter & Radiation [England; work published by Oxford U. Press]
   
7. 1942 T. S. ELIOT Music of Poetry [living in England]
   
8. 1948 N. WIENER Cybernetics [US]
   
9. 1957 Technology [UK; it refers to 'colour' television]
   
10. 1970 Toronto Daily Star [Canada]
    
11. 1972 Times England

I scent an unevenness here.

It is named the Oxford English Dictionary, after all. Perhaps the Americans should put together a rival dictionary, then...surely there is nothing of that ilk available now.

Well said, Kalleh! You are seeing a slight where one doesn't exist, Shufitz.

There is no truly international TV broadcaster, although perhaps CNN comes closest. Can you suggest a TV company to work in partnership with the OED that would be able to put out a programmme on both sides of the Atlantic?

quote:

How amazingly insular! OED seems to think only those in the UK have anything to say.

I have to say that's pretty rich coming from one who hails from the USA - arguably the most insular of the world's advanced nations!

The OED is an English publication, published in England and compiling a list of UK English words. The USA has its own dictionaries and its own lexicographers who will compile their rival US publications using US sources - as indeed they should.

Ahhh...Richard is back!

Welcome back from Barbados, Richard. When this subject was originally brought up, I said to myself, "I bet Richard will have something to say about that comment." Sure enough!

Sometimes, though, the errors that we've found in the OED are due to this publication not looking into American English enough. Surely their mistake with the etymology of "political football" is one of those times. Nobody at the OED, I am certain, wants to see factual errors.

Yet, there is no one who has more respect for the OED than I do (excepting, of course, their view on "epicaricacy!" ).

Richard English says, "The OED is an English publication compiling a list of UK English words."

Not so, Richard. The OED purports to cover worldwide English, claiming that it "covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa, from Australia and New Zealand to the Caribbean. (It even emphasizes this in a tan box as a sub-headline.)

And it specifically states, "But how is an entry written? ... The first step ... is therefore to collect evidence of words and phrases in use from all over the English-speaking world."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

quote:

You are seeing a slight where one doesn't exist, Shufitz.

So arnie, you're asserting that I've committed premature expostulation?

quote:

And it specifically states, "But how is an entry written? ... The first step ... is therefore to collect evidence of words and phrases in use from all over the English-speaking world."

If this is the case, and I agree that their site would seem to imply it, then I feel you should ask them why they have sought advice only from UK speakers.

Unless, of course, the solicitation you saw (and I haven't looked at it) was just to the UK and there are similar solicitations in other countries.

I know that the OED does give some country variations but I am surprised, I confess, that they claim to give them all:

Australian
Canadian
Caribbean
Irish
New Zealand
Phillipines
South Africa
Zimbabwe

Plus, of course, US and UK

That's quite a task.

Richard, the more I think about it, the more it leads to interesting questions. For the task of updating the OED is very different from the task of preparing the OED in the the first place.

Consider: when the OED was prepared (roughly 1900), it had to cover over a thousand years of English, back to before 900 A.D. A major job. The vast majority of extant writings, from that period, were from the UK. Certainly there were some English writings from Canada, US and the colonies. But those would be relatively minor, simply because until the last part of that period, those geographic areas represented only a small portion of the English-speaking population -- and doubtless, a lesser portion of the literary output.

But now, when the OED is updated, the task is very different. The basic task is to review the last century or so. The growth of language has been tremendous, but a major part of it has taken place outside the UK. "UK only" would be a major limitation. Also, the spread (and the great number of countries) raises the question of how to handle regional variations. If (for example) a usage is common in Australia but unknown elsewhere, should it be included? What about words from areas like India, where the English-speaking population is large in number but is a small percentage of the overall population?

I'm not sure how I would handle this if I were czar supervising the update of the OED. Comments?

(By the way, you'd think it would be fairly easy to find a chart on-line showing the populations of various countries in various years. But I sure couldn't find one.)

Here is the appeal for help on the OED site.

I was really unhappy with this entry

quote:

Wanted: Printed evidence before 1982.

Sci-fi fans - was cyberspace part of your universe before 1982? Did author William Gibson invent the word, or did he simply usher it out of obscurity? Researchers have been tracking this one on the OED's sci-fi(link) site, but as yet no one has found anything earlier.

The use of the word sci-fi in the link was somewhat distressing, since the term is considered to be derogatory to true Science Fiction or "SF". This is the kind of mistake one wouldn't expect linguists to make. Then, I clicked on the link and the term "sci-fi" wasn't used anywhere on the page, making me happy, though somewhat confused. This term is similar to "The Big Bang", which was original a joke to discredit the theory.

How I agree, Seanahan! How I hate the use of 'Sci-Fi'!

It looks like the editor of the SF site is a fan; or it least knows enough to use the preferred abbreviation. It's a pity that the editor of the main site didn't liaise with his colleague!

SCI FI
Pronounced "sky fi" or "si fi", an abbreviation for "science fiction", said to have been introduced by Forrest J. Ackerman, a prominent fan fond of word-play, in the 1950s, when the term "hi-fi" was becoming popular. Never much used within the sf community, the term became very popular with journalists and media people generally, until by the 1970s it was the most common abbreviation used by nonreaders of sf to refer to the genre, often with an implied sneer. Some critics within the genre, Terry Carr and Damon Knight among them, decided that, since the term was derogatory, it might be critically useful in distinguishing sf hack-work - particularly ill written, lurid adventure stories - from sf of a more intellectually demanding kind. Around 1978 the critic Susan Wood and others began pronouncing the term "skiffy". In 1980s-90s usage "skiffy", which sounds freindlier than "sci fi", has perhaps for that reason come to be less condemnatory. Skiffy is colourful, sometimes entertaining, junk sf: Star Wars is skiffy.
- The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction © 1993

I wonder what Clute and Nichols have since added as to the Sci Fi Channel?

..as to rewriting the OED, online entries added or mod'ed over the last five(?) years should have lots of input from the N.A. editors mentioned above. Someone with access could make some representative citation checks for such entries. (I know they started with the Ms; are they past the Ts yet?)

here's an example I pulled outta my hat, at random:

maudlin, citations added post-1900 (2001 draft entry):

1b. applied to eyes, tears, etc.
1924 A. D. H. SMITH Porto Bello Gold xiii. 186 Her father..blinked at us through maudlin tears.


2. Having reached the stage of drunkenness characterized by tearful sentimentality etc.
1904 J. LONDON Sea-wolf viii. 77 They drank whiskey, they drank it neat, and I fetched more... The cook..grew maudlin, familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright. 1956 A. WILSON Anglo-Saxon Attitudes I. iv. 130 She drank too much and apologized again and again in a maudlin way and was very amorous. 1991 B. ANDERSON Girls High (1992) ii. 16 One night at the Western Park Tavern..he was getting maudlin and mumbling.

3. Characterized by shallow sentimentality etc.
1908 G. K. CHESTERTON Man who was Thursday 49 We do not want the Supreme Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy. 1946 S. T. FELSTEAD Stars who made Halls i. 15 The words of these melodies might have been a trifle maudlin, judged by present-day standards, but the music..has withstood the test of time. 1990 D. ACKERMAN Nat. Hist. Senses iv. 193 Unlike many memoirs about handicapped children, it isn't at all maudlin.

---

Smith, London and Ackerman are USns; Anderson is a Kiwi; Felstead, Wilson and Chesterton are Brits.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tsuwm,

tsuwm, your last on "maudlin" is very interesting indeed, but from my checking it may be atypical. I made two checks.

First I, like you, chose a word from the Ms. I choose 'minor' and to get a broader picture, added 'minority'. The post-1990 cites, for the principal meanings, run 10 UK, 1 US, 1 Norway. Those cites are detailed below, and you'll notice that many of them even make particular reference to Britain.

My second check was even more interesting. See next post.

---

• 1921 J[ohn] GALSWORTHY English: a somewhat minor consideration.
• 1960 C[ecil] DAY LEWIS English: held some minor post in Dublin Castle
• 1968 A[dam] DIMENT English: he knotted the tie, from a very minor public school
• 1983 P[eter] LEVI English: An extremely minor poet
• 1903 R. D. SHAW UK? Published in Edinburg: Pauline Epist.: greatly in the minority
• 1991 S[ivi?]. GERRARD Norway? … always in the minority
• 1941 ‘G. ORWELL’ English: In England all the boasting and flag-wagging … is done by small minorities.
• 2000 Daily Tel. English: If Britain keeps opposing this, it's going to end up being in a minority of one.
• 1921 H. W. V. TEMPERLEY English; editor of the Cambridge Historical Journal: protection of racial, linguistic, or religious minorities
• 1964 E[lspeth] HUXLEY English: The various minorities who have settled in Britain
• 1917 Times English: protection of the right of minorities
• 1994 Entrepreneur U.S.: the U.S. population is expected to grow … most of this spurt attributed to minorities.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

For a second check I looked for a newly-created word. Of course, cites might fairly be heavier wherever the word originated, so what was needed was a word that sprung suddenly all across the English-speaking world. After considering A-bomb and H-bomb, I settled on sputnik.

For the literal use, OED gives 6 Commonwealth cites and 1 U.S. cites. (Five of six are UK, the other Canada.) For the figurative use it gives 3 UK; 1 U.S. and 1 unidentified.

The first three cites are from the London Times, and this is interesting. Sputnik was launched late in the evening (Moscow Time) of Oct. 4, 1957, and by the time the Russians announced it, it was about 6:00 P.M. in New York (11:00 P.M. in London), perhaps too late to make the October 5 newspapers. The first cite OED gives is from the London Times of October 9. But even a simple check of the New York Times archives shows that they used that term four times on October 6-8, and three more times on the 9th – none of which gets into OED. I'm sure there are others who beat the Oct. 9 date too.

---

• 1957 Times 9 Oct. English: launching of the sputnik ('fellow-traveller'), as the satellite is called
• 1957 Ibid. 30 Oct. English: Mr. Khrushchev replied: 'To peace and to the sputnik as a symbol of peace!'
• 1957 Ibid. 4 Nov. English: The régime which sends a second sputnik girdling the earth
• 1958 A. HUXLEY English: the physical and engineering advances which have put sputniks into the heavens.
• 1964 M. MCLUHAN Canada: When sputnik had first gone into orbit
• 1971 New Scientist English: China's … first sputnik
• 1983 N.Y. Times U.S.: we have no worries about the fate of this sputnik.
  
  
• 1958 Newsweek US: confronted with a sputnik in the chemical, biological, and radiological field, as we did in missiles
• 1959 Daily Tel. English: Internal ‘sputnik’, pills containing miniature radio transmitters, which can travel around the intestines.
• 1963 Punch English: Such Hollywood sputnik- as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr.
• 1968 Michelin Guide Unknown: N.Y. City 124 Coney Island..scenic railways, Ferris wheels … phantom trains, tunnels of love, sputniks.

We SF fans like to use "The Skiffy Channel" to refer to the Sci-Fi channel, which for those of you who don't know, plays more fantasy, horror, psychic nonsense, and recently reality tv, than actual Science Fiction.

quote:

plays more [dreck] than actual Science Fiction.

for sure; I wonder if this is because of a shortage of actual sf material, or because Turner owns the rights to most of the decent movies extant in Known Space*.

*gratuitous Larry Niven reference