Wordorigins.org

Wordorigins.org is devoted to the origins of words and phrases, or as a linguist would put it, to etymology. Etymology is the study of word origins. (It is not the study of insects; that is entomology.) Where words come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons. Often, popular tales of a word’s origin arise. Sometimes these are true; more often they are not. While it can be disappointing when a neat little tale turns out to be untrue, almost invariably the true origin is just as interesting.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 264 words with first citations from 1973. In that year, Derridean critics were deconstructing literature through intertextual readings; a lot of people were weirded out by est; members of the Symbionese Liberation Army and other cultic groups were deprogrammed; techies were playing with diskettes, Unix, grep, and FTPing; and linguists started talking about Ebonics.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 281 words with first citations from 1972. In that year, Hispanics and Latinas showcased America’s ethnic diversity; pre-loved was a cringe-inducing euphemism; blaxploitation films were big in the movie theaters, while small-screen comedy moved into the Pythonesque; high-tech weapons like Tasers started to appear; and some employees of the White House were arrested breaking into the Watergate.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 333 words with first citations from 1971. In that year, phreaks could use blue boxes to get toll-free calls without an 800 number; Deadheads started bringing lightsticks to concerts; addicts jonesed for a superfly fix; and techies played with motherboards and daemons.

I missed this a few days ago, but Timothy Egan has a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times on e-books and the future of publishing.

E-books, and the way they are currently produced and distributed, are not an unalloyed good. They have their drawbacks, but Egan’s main thrust is quite correct. The doomsayers who evoke the specter of a coming cultural wastelands are flat out wrong. There is this:

In their annual report last August, the Association of American Publishers reported that overall revenues, and number of books sold in all formats, were up sizably in three years since 2008. Without e-books, the numbers would have been flat, or declined.

One-fifth of all American adults reported reading an e-book in the past year, according to an optimistic report from the Pew Center. And those digital consumers read far more books on average—about 24 a year—than the dead-tree consumers.

Another surprise: e-book readers also buy lots of paper books. The buyers of digital tomes “read more books in all formats,” Pew reported.

And Egan also notes the resurgence of independent bookstores.

The lesson here is not to confuse the business model with the thing itself. The traditional business model used by publishers is doomed, not publishing itself.

[Tip ‘o the Hat: Andrew Sullivan]

The Oxford English Dictionary has 344 words with first citations from 1970. In that year, while the counter-culture was busy getting its ya-yas out, police on power trips were resorting to pepper gas; Reaganomics was sweeping California while liberation theology reigned in Latin America; corporate America introduced the Amex card and the Big Mac; in Vietnam, scared newbies were fragging their officers; and the strains of funkadelic and punk rock music began to compete over the radio airwaves.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 365 words with first citations from 1968. In that year, the first North American case of a strange, new immunodeficiency disease is reported; techies were hands-on using new microchips, debuggers, and telnet; homophobia and ageism were new names for old bigotries; Imax films made the silver screen even bigger; and Neil Armstrong moonwalked fifteen years before Michael Jackson.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 392 words with first citations from 1968. In that year, you could be amped on uppers; the Cold War brought us SALT and Reforger; Yippies and Hare Krishnas were seen by many to be signs of the downfall of Western Civilization; pagers, routers, and uplinks were at the cutting edge of communications technology; and if you ate too many chimichangas, you could work it off by doing aerobics.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 395 words with first citations from 1967. In that year, all sorts of things were in, be-ins, love-ins, and even laugh-ins; after consuming cannabinoids in doobies, one might want a hoagie or a fry-up; Mao jackets and Denver boots represented the iron heel of authority; in academia, refereed papers could go through peer review; and codecs, word processing, and minicomputers made their high-tech debut.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 382 words with first citations from 1966. In that year, adults could ralph after drinking too much kir and Stolichnaya, while teeny-boppers who were too young for keggers had to settle for Shirley Temples; druggies were having mind-blowing freak-outs on meth and Quaaludes; Mace and MIRVs represented advances in both low and high ends of weapons technology; you could pay for your upscale timeshare with your Master Charge card; yada yada.