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?"
Just a bizarre peak around 1940's.
Bombs falling, V2 rockets, mad dash for jet fighters... not surprising the entire culture is leaping into the future.
Scary shit, actually.
I wouldnt classify avatar and morph as "science fiction" words persay. Rather it might be more logical to classify them as "scientific" or "technological", because they are not just used in fiction but rather in everyday speech to refer to real things...
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
I remember Morph being an oooold X-men villain, like late 70s or early 80s.
And his mutant ability was that he was a shapeshifter. He could morph into just about anything.
I don't think its "VR" but the 1980s Ultima series adventure games used Avatar to describe your character.
I searched for but could not find:
Bite my shiny metal ass
its full of stars
Spock, why does your underwear have three legs?
I don't think that this project is complete yet.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Are they saying morph was not used until 1993? morph
In the future, these sites will be a great tool. Imagine in 100-200 years, there will be a map of the English language that is traceable to a degree not currently possible, and we'll all understand language patterns better. I have heard that something like 10% of Shakespeare is completely lost in translation due to changes in the language, so one can only imagine what a resource like this will be able to provide for future generations -- hopefully, there won't be as much cultural reinvention (i.e. the printing press: China -> Europe)
stuff |
"Morph" was a clay-mation character who appeared on UK kids tv from 1978 onwards. He was animated by Aardman Animations (who later went on to make "Wallace and Gromit" and "Chicken Run") and appeared on shows with Tony Hart (recently interviewed by b3ta)
A lot of the dates seem awfully late. For instance, for "cloaking device" they list 1996(!) and 1981 editions of books, while mentioning that, oh hey, Star Trek may have used the phrase "cloaking device" in the sixties, but we'd need to see the script to verify.
I don't understand: why does a usage have to be on paper to count for this project?
dinosaur comics
The Morph Files was early Aardman animation, with clay characters that could easily, well, morph from one shape to another as the story required. The first production is from 1980.
to the Aardman site
Everyone knows the word Morph's first use in science fiction can be traced back to Lord Albiron's 1929 novel "Danger, Danger High voltage." Quoting from the 3rd edition (Bantam), p. 33, 3rd paragraph :
"Blast it Timmy!, that durn George Bush specimen has morphed into some kind dumb ass nucular monkey. They must be running some kind of avatar process on him."
I'll never forget the first time i read that.
HAD
What is the earliest usage of the verb "to slashdot"?
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
However, this is the beginning of something that will be interesting in a couple decades. I'd like to see how these numbers change over time.
Right now we have a peak of new Sci Fi words from the 40s and 50s (about 50 years ago). The slope is shallow coming up to the present, but the drop off is steep to the 20s and earlier.
Does this mean it takes about 40-50 years for new words to work their way into a more main stream usage, but then they fall out of fashion quickly? If so, the shape of the graph would change little over time, just the years along the X-axis would advance.
On the other hand, this could mean peaks in new words correspond to peaks in scientific innovation or other social factors. What we see happening to language in the 40s and 50s could correspond to the heightened anxiety of WWII and the cold war. Or it could follow the historic changes to our fundamental understanding of the universe occurring during the first couple decades of the century.
Of course, none of that can be determined from this one snap shot. Nothing to see here folks...yet.
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.
I received for Christmas, "The Meaning of Everything", by Simon Winchester. This gives a very interesting and compelling account of the genesis of the dictionary, some of the very strange characters who contributed and the process by which entries are constructed. A very interesting read.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Somebody at Stanford has done research into the word 'morph'. It came into widespread use with the debut of Michael Jackson's Black or White video of 1991. I wrote the software for that video at PDI (Pacific Data Images) in 1990, and presented it at Siggraph in 1992.
Interestingly, ILM was pushing hard for the alternative 'morf' spelling, and we spent considerable effort seeding our preferred 'morph' spelling into the trade press. Fortunately for us, we were working on music videos and television commercials that showed off the technique well, and ILM only used their tool for a few shots in a few movies.
I think that Black or White is still the most impressive morph ever done -- probably because we spent about six person-months refining it. Jamie Dixon and Amie Slate did the bulk of the work for that video.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
It seems to me that they are missing "Grok." Seems rather strange that they would leave that one out. I use it on a daily basis, and so do most other people I know.
Hockey - Canada's gift to the world
The notion of human-shaped machines goes a lot further back than that - right back to Greek mythology. But such things were considered magic and/or supernatural: only with the Industrial Revolution did it become possible to think of machines that were manufactured, which is about the right date for a 1727 citation.
Even at that, robots remained nasty dangerous things-Man-wasn't-intended-to-know (cf Frankenstein) until the 20th Century, when writers like Capek created/popularized the concept (and the word, too: depends on who you ask), and Asimov depicted them as tools, designed for a purpose by engineers.
...laura, still a fan of Susan Calvin
1. Morph is not greek, morphos is. 2. They're looking specifically for the sf uses of those words, not the first occurrence of the word with any definition. The way the OED works is that it tries to find the earliest printed occurrences of each definition of a word. "Avatar" in the sense of "a representative face/person/attribute of a god," the Sanskrit meaning, is different from the sf sense of "an electronic representation of a person which is not visually mimetic" or however you want to define these: so the OED would want the first *English* use of the first meaning (probably in the 18th or 19th century, whenever Sanskrit studies was just starting out) and the first English use of the second meaning (probably when the first muds and moos came out, 70s or 80s).
>>Somebody at Stanford has done research into the word 'morph'. It came into widespread use with the debut of Michael Jackson's Black or White video of 1991. I wrote the software for that video at PDI (Pacific Data Images) in 1990, and presented it at Siggraph in 1992.
Maybe in the US. Here in the UK, a generation of kids grew up with Morph - he was a shape-shifting plasticine stop-motion animated character created in 1980. In fact, Morph was the very first creation of Aardman Animations, who went on to produce Wallace & Grommit and Chicken Run. Learn (slightly) more at http://www.aardman.com/showcase/amazing.html.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
I believe my first recollection of Avatar was in Vernor Vinge's "True Names", published 1981. ("True Names & Other Dangers", a collection of short stories which included it, was published in 1987)
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
NM
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
This was easy enough to get as a google search (having seen the origin before)
The 1920 story/play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Czech Author: Karel Capek, however his brother Josef is credited with coining the word.
I am unable to cite this correctly, not having the original publication, but am sending it off in any event.
It would seem even the simplest SciFi words should be considered for submission. So rack your brains then do a search.
(from the play, English translation, page 1):
On the right-hand wall are fastened printed placards:
"CHEAP LABOR. ROSSUM'S ROBOTS."
"ROBOTS FOR THE TROPICS. 150 DOLLARS EACH."
"EVERYONE SHOULD BUY HIS OWN ROBOT."
"DO YOU WANT TO CHEAPEN YOUR OUTPUT? ORDER ROSSUM'S ROBOTS":
Letter To Iran
In the UK at least every small child knew the world "Morph" back in the 1970's. Morph was a plasticine animation who would indeed turn into other things.
I've no idea where the "morph" of sci-fi came from but perhaps too much BBC childrens TV ?
(http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=1438)