Re: see what the boys in the back room will have
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Wed, 01 Sep 1999 09:08:18 -0400
[Even though this is only mildly Salingeresque (feel free to slap me
with the splintered ruler), I wanted to digress about the dictionary;
somehow, I suspect it's relevant, considering how concerned we are
with words. --tim]
At 8:20 AM +0100 on 9/1/1999, you wrote:
> This is all getting far too boring & technical. I'm going to study
> Tim's 'inside the program' proposal & report back if & when
> I ever emerge. It sounds ominously like 'from the depths of
>the temple
> ...'
We shall send out a scouting expedition if you don't come back from
the innards. Leave a trail of bread crumbs.
> It doesn't seem to mention 'boffin' - not even in the appendix -
> which mildly surprises me since a lot of other wartime usages *are*
> discussed. I was also mildly surprised that boffin does not appear
> in the RAF until 1945. I'm almost certain I heard my father
> refer to them around 1943-44 when he was in charge of building
> Stirling bombers in Belfast. His work brought him into daily
> contact with these geniuses - for whom he had an awed regard.
> I'm absolutely confident he used to speak of them as 'the boys
> from the back room' - but maybe 'boffin' is me being wise after
> the event.
Well, given the state of matters in Belfast and the rest of the U.K.
between '41 and '45, it's plausible that the word didn't appear on
paper (which is where the OED people typically get their "earliest
usage" references, I believe), or if it did appear, it was not in
plaintext (e.g., the crypto gang at Bletchley Park or elsewhere could
have stashed it away encrypted or in plaintext), or what your father
heard was shop talk, which typically takes a couple of years to
trickle down to a point where it appears in written form -- and those
types of words are most often cited in the OED as one person quoting
another, in effect transforming the word from oral-only to
oral-and-written in nature, thereby giving it enough legitimacy to be
cited.
The truly interesting thing is that since the first edition of the
OED was completed in (I think) 1928, and the word does not appear in
there then, suggests that it either didn't exist yet or was truly
obscure. And the appendix was, I think, done in 1933. So, still no
trace of it.
There was a four-volume supplement to the OED published by Clarendon
Press in 1972; I don't have access to that and can't get to a copy
with my hobbled leg. (Hint to anyone who is near a good library and
can take a peek: the full title is "A Supplement to the Oxford
English Dictionary, edited by R.W. Burchfield." It would be
interesting to see if the word shows up in that resource, as opposed
to its appearance in the 2nd ed., which was released in print in
1989.)
The most frustrating thing about the OED now is that while there
exists an electronic version of it, Oxford U.P. only sells you the
raw data, on the assumption that you have a programmer lying around
somewhere who will write you a front-end for it.
A couple of years ago I did a bit of social engineering and wheedled
an account on an Oxford system (having credentials in the computing
community sometimes helps), and on it I found a pretty good HTML
front-end to the raw data, written by one of the OUP programmers.
But the folks at Oxford (in the Oxford office, not the New York
office), who sell the exotic versions, such as the raw data tape, did
not see fit to sell it or give away that front-end, taking the
ultra-conservative approach.
I offered them all the blandishments possible: I'd buy the tape (at a
cost in excess of US$20,000), I'd give them access to several
different types of powerful computer systems at no charge, on which
they could develop a front-end to their satisfaction, and if it
turned out well I'd talk it up in the academic world so that sales to
universities would soar. But they declined about as consistently as
Harold Ober & Associates decline mail for their most well-known
client. So, still no great front-end to the electronic version of
the dictionary, which has its etymology and references color-coded
and cross-indexed.
> Better stop. I can hear Jer tapping his pen against the side of
> his glass of natural, home-cultured yoghurt.
I don't know ... he was in the Counter-Intelligence Corps during the
war. Maybe HE can give us a comment on the etymology OR on the
strange behavior of the Oxford folks. I can imagine him watching
choir practice and scribbling down the obscure words he had heard
that day, trying to keep the mist on his cuff from smearing his
paper, and getting "boffin" in some little notebook. 8-)
--tim