Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast
Sep 13, 2026 · 51 min · 14 segments
In this episode, Ray and OED editor Fiona McPherson examine the tension between linguistic change and lexicographical authority. Rather than treating the dictionary as a static canon, they explore how…
Fiona McPhersonGuestRay BelliHostAnd again, just to give a sense of this, even beyond, you know, quotations from the usual sources like newspapers, novels, etc.
We're also talking about manuscripts, handwritten letters, you know, any form, any medium, any written medium through which, you know, language exists that qualifies as eligible for an entry.
Can it be attributed and verified? So therefore it can be from a manuscript.
We even, there's at least one example in OED where we have a sign above a shop.
And because that was, it was obviously in the first edition of the dictionary and an editor actually went out and verified it so they'd be able to tell from the date the shop existed, etc., etc., But it's about the verifiable date, as long as the date can't be changed in any kind of
It's quite hard to honestly say with absolute certainty that this is the first date for something.
With a word that is coined for a particular reason, maybe it's an invention that's been given a name.
But even in those cases, if there was an earlier version of it, which was still given the same name but wasn't quite the same, you could still, you know, that could still be earlier.
So we try to find the earliest first date, but we're only as good as the technology, I suppose, that's available to us.
If you think of the word open as in a business or a club or a pub being open, ready to accept customers, that kind of thing.
I believe that was included in one of the supplements to OED that was published in the 20th century.
Why not? When we came to revise the OED and that particular entry, because part of what we're doing now is updating the original text, editors managed to find an earlier example or two or three all the way back to anglo-saxon times so about a thousand years it's 800 something like that now and and also examples from that point up until the one that they had previously had as the first example now these sources all existed and They didn't somehow magically appear.
And again, just to give a sense of this, even beyond, you know, quotations from the usual sources like newspapers, novels, etc.
We're also talking about manuscripts, handwritten letters, you know, any form, any medium, any written medium through which, you know, language exists that qualifies as eligible for an entry.
Can it be attributed and verified? So therefore it can be from a manuscript.
We even, there's at least one example in OED where we have a sign above a shop.
And because that was, it was obviously in the first edition of the dictionary and an editor actually went out and verified it so they'd be able to tell from the date the shop existed, etc., etc., But it's about the verifiable date, as long as the date can't be changed in any kind of
It's quite hard to honestly say with absolute certainty that this is the first date for something.
With a word that is coined for a particular reason, maybe it's an invention that's been given a name.
But even in those cases, if there was an earlier version of it, which was still given the same name but wasn't quite the same, you could still, you know, that could still be earlier.
So we try to find the earliest first date, but we're only as good as the technology, I suppose, that's available to us.
If you think of the word open as in a business or a club or a pub being open, ready to accept customers, that kind of thing.
I believe that was included in one of the supplements to OED that was published in the 20th century.
Why not? When we came to revise the OED and that particular entry, because part of what we're doing now is updating the original text, editors managed to find an earlier example or two or three all the way back to anglo-saxon times so about a thousand years it's 800 something like that now and and also examples from that point up until the one that they had previously had as the first example now these sources all existed and They didn't somehow magically appear.
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