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 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.
Yah, and I don't think I'd qualify "persay" as a word, per se.
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
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
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.