Do you have an earlier record of a word which our editors are currently researching? Browse our latest appeals below and help us record the English language.
You can also find out more about the OED appeals and read about our previous appeals on the OED blog.
Do you have an earlier record of a word which our editors are currently researching? Browse our latest appeals below and help us record the English language.
You can also find out more about the OED appeals and read about our previous appeals on the OED blog.
Patrick of Boston has now provided evidence from 28 Dec. 1987.
FAQ is an initialism from ‘Frequently Asked Questions’, used as the name for a list of questions and answers. The term was originally associated with the Usenet discussion system, and has been attributed to Eugene N. Miya, researcher at NASA, […]
Posted by OED_Editor on 1 October 2012 19.05
Tags: 1980s, abbreviations, Computing
Comments: 14
Ammon Shea has supplied evidence from December 1963.
Was a ‘disco’ a dress before it was a nightclub? That’s the surprising implication of the evidence OED researchers have uncovered while revising the entry for disco n. The earliest quotations our editors have found […]
Posted by OED_Editor on 30 September 2012 19.29
Tags: 1960s, Music
Comments: 31
Among North American children, ‘cooties’ are an imaginary germ with which a socially undesirable person, or one of the opposite sex, is said to be infected. Our first evidence for this common playground taunt is from 1967, in a children’s novel by Beverly Cleary […]
Posted by OED_Editor on 29 September 2012 19.14
Tags: 1960s, North American, slang
Comments: 49
The phrase ‘to come in from the cold’, meaning ‘(esp. of a spy) to return from isolation, concealment, or exile’, is famous from John le Carré’s 1963 novel “The Spy who Came in from the Cold”. OED editors are currently researching […]
Posted by OED_Editor on 28 September 2012 20.32
Tags: 1960s, Literature
Comments: 7
Michael Finney submitted verifiable evidence from 1936.
The first evidence for the metaphorical ‘blue-arsed fly’ in the OED’s entry comes from a 1970 quote attributed to the Duke of Edinburgh. The r-less ‘blue-assed fly’, however, is attested from at least 1932. Why such a discrepancy? […]
Posted by OED_Editor on 27 September 2012 19.40
Tags: 1970s, British
Comments: 78
Agent Six has provided a verifiable example from 1976.
The sarcastic interjection ‘in your (or my, her, his, etc.) dreams’ is familiar in everyday spoken English, but the earliest evidence our editors have found comes from a Usenet post in 1986. We suspect that it may have been used earlier […]
Posted by OED_Editor on 26 September 2012 20.01
Tags: 1980s, North American
Comments: 19
OED contributor Fred Shapiro has supplied an example from 1970.
The winter festival of Kwanzaa was initiated in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, an African-American activist and scholar, but the earliest example in the OED is from […]
Posted by OED_Editor on 25 September 2012 8.36
Tags: 1970s, North American
Comments: 6