Ever since OED first began publishing entries in 1884, word geeks have been trying to one-up the big dictionary by finding older instances of words than the oldest it cites (such discoveries used to fill up the pages Notes and Queries). From time to time in supplements and additions OED would update an entry with an older citation, but with the revision project that is OED Online (OED3), it got into the antedating business big-time, with every entry subject to review. OED’s antedatings even get written up, which such arresting headlines as:
A splendid antedating of white lie
An antedating for gay, and other treasures from the Burgess Papers
A huge find for the OED – a startling antedating for partner meaning ‘spouse’
Revised entries began being updated in OED Online in 2000, and have been released in quarterly batches ever since. Recently I’ve been working on antedatings, so I thought to look into how the rates of antedating have changed since the project started over 20 years ago.
Here’s a graph showing the total rate of antedating (percent of entries revised with older first citation dates than the corresponding entry in OED2) and the rate of very big antedatings (50 years or more).
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