Slashdot Mirror
OED Science Fiction Database Updated
solferino writes "The Oxford English dictionary commenced a project back in 2001 (Slashdot report) to solicit reader citations of the earliest uses of science fiction words. The most recent OED newsletter covers the progress of the project, which has its own site hosted on a FreeBSD box running a MySQL database engine. An interesting graph on the site shows date of word origin by decade. Surprisingly recent words featured on the site are /avatar/ (1990 - in the VR sense) and /morph/ (1993) - unless the Slashdot readership can report earlier uses?"
Are they saying morph was not used until 1993? morph
Avatar shows up in Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light" in 1967. It's used in the PR (physical reality, heh!) sense of changing bodies at whim.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is not a "typical" dictionary, for those of you who are not familiar with it.
I noticed several people mentioning concerns about the use of words prior to some of the dates mentioned and also about non-print use of words. The thing is, the OED attempts to define words as they have been used in printed literature. In other words, without the Star-Trek script that illustrates the use of the term "cloaking device", they cannot verify it and date it properly.
The thinking, if I am not mistaken, is based on the idea that a word in published print has gone through an editing process. The editor is then responsible for making sure that the words used in the final publication are valid and used accurately. The OED attempts to catalog any new words or new uses of existing words that appear after having gone through this process. The assumption being that any new words or new uses of words are now "valid" as a result of having been printed.
Whether you agree with this process is probably not relevant; but that is the way that I understand it to work.
If you would like more information you should read the book "The Professor and The Madman" by Simon Winchester. It's a great story that details how the OED came to be; and Mr. Winchester is a fine autor.
Probably because that's the standard for the Oxford English Dictionary, as started by the Victorians.
The original project was not simply (hah) to collect every word in usage in the English language, but to trace the evolution of meaning of each single word from its first recorded use on paper to its current day usage. A vast team of volunteers and paid members produced and selected quotations from verifiable documents that illustrated the changing meaning of every single word throughout its recorded existance.
The Dictionary in OED is somewhat of an understatement. But then, we talk not merely of the English, but of the Victorian English.