A special greeting and thank you to anycon, who asks, "Why is 'antaean', not in the OED?"

It should be. I'd say "OED goofed," if that weren't heretically oxymoronic.

Adding to the data we have already from aput and shufitz. I've found 9 more usages of 'antaean' in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe, dating from 1919 through 1995. Doubtless our readers can supply more. 'Antaean' has also been mentioned twice on this site, here (scroll down) and here.

It gratifies me tremendously when we unearth possible error in OED. (Recall our talks about 'political football' and varies 'colors of fall', and our differing views of 'epicaricacy'.) Anycon, you've done it with your very first post with us. Welcome aboard!



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(PS: The Boston Globe link won't print clickably as a title.
It is http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=BG&p_theme=bg&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_text_search-0=antaean&s_dispstring=antaean%20AND%20date(all)&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date&xcal_useweights=no

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

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Originally posted by wordcrafter:
Why is "antaean" not in the OED?

It should be. I'd say "OED goofed," if that weren't heretically oxymoronic.

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True, true, but I already caught this oversight and corrected it a few months ago.

I'm up to the early E's in the OED rewrite. Your patience is appreciated.

CJ, you're going to confuse some of our newer posters.

True but this will only encourage them to post more frequently to request clarification or to go back through the various threads to look for answers. In either case, it's a win-win situation all around.


Maybe we should add a section to the Welcome to Newcomer's thread to provide thumbnail biographies of all of us related to how or what we've written over the past few years. Suggested entries:

R.E. - I would write this in the form of a Gilbert & Sullivan piece, outlining R.E.'s love of real ale and his Rolls-Royce, his distaste for Budweiser and greengrocer's apostrophes, and then end it with "He is the very model of a proper British gentleman."

B.H. - Widely traveled and obsessed (if that's not too strong a word)with the "Alice" books.

Kalleh - Worries overly much about anyone taking offense at anything; Mother Hen to the group.

Arnie - Knows everything.

Me - Claims to be rewriting the OED, occasionally proclaims himself monarch of various non-existent realms; camera shy.

etc etc etc etc


All in all, I wouldn't worry about it overly much. But then again, I'm not the Mother Hen around here.

CJ,

Do you mean to say you are working through the OED in alphabetical order? That seems very much unlike you. I'd have thought you'd be rewriting it at least in reverse order, and more likely you'd use some system such as attacking the words in order of length -- after all, long words only serve to confuse people.

As mentioned in today's chat, I've decided to scrap the work I've already accomplished in re-writing the OED (I had gotten up to the E's) in favor of a system of providing definitions for all the words in the English language in limerick form. The first entry in the new OED will go:

The very first word here is "a."
It's used with a noun to convey
A singular notion
Like "a duck" or "a potion"
Or top notch as when used in "Grade A."


As you might imagine, I fear that this project is going to take longer than originally anticipated.

When you get around to it ....

The last letter, as you will see
Is the one that we Yankees call zee
Though the Brits, it is said,
Call this last letter zed
In keeping with their prosody

Always helpful

~~~ jerry

It gratifies me tremendously when we unearth possible error in OED.
Speaking of errors in dictionaries, when I looked up "macarism" for the Bluffing thread, I realized that the name of a dictionary, as listed in Onelook, is in error: Forthrights Phrontistery Shouldn't it have an apostrophe? However, I did note that on the dictionary site itself, it did have an apostrophe. So...the error evidently is with Onelook.

BTW, where is anycon anyway...after all our accolades?