Monitoring change

The pace of semantic change can be fast, and these days (and I'm talking in contrast to the days of the First Edition of the OED) we have resources to capture this. In 1920 the Czech writer Karel Čapek published his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) &ndash in Czech, but with a strange new word (in English) in the title. Čapek said that the word was suggested to him by his brother Josef (from Czech robota ‘forced labour, drudgery’). In 1922 the play was performed in an English translation in New York. And straightaway English-language sources started to record this new word robot: ‘an intelligent artificial being typically made of metal and resembling in some way a human or other animal’. The following year (1923) we find people being referred to as ‘robots’, and by 1927 (back in the United States) the new word was linked specifically to developments in what would later become known as ‘robotics’, and we have robot used in the sense ‘a machine capable of automatically carrying out a complex series of movements’.

This is one of the rapid shifts in meaning tracked in the OED Online's latest release of revised and updated entries (Rh - rococoesque). There are plenty of other examples which make the same point. Take rip-off. By assembling the available recorded evidence for the term, we can say fairly confidently that English speakers were first aware of this new term in 1968 (in ‘rip-off artist’). At the time, the sense was ‘a theft, a swindle’. But almost without hesitation English speakers started to play with the word, and in 1969 we find the common ‘imitation’ sense.

Often this creative rapidity crosses language barriers, and this is perhaps most apparent with scientific terms. Riboflavin (vitamin B₂) was coined in German in 1935, and its occurrence in English-language scientific source dates from the same year.

It's fascinating to look at these new arrivals in the language, to see how the historical record addresses this speed of change. If the gap between one sense and another is long, does this mean that the new meaning wasn't needed till later, or that the record is incomplete?

These are the major words revised in the present release:

rhapsody, rhetoric, rhetorical, rheumatic, rhinoceros, rhizome, rhododendron, rhomboid, rhombus, rhubarb, rhyme, rhythm, rhythmic, rib, ribald, ribbon, rice, rich, rick, ricochet, rid, riddance, riddle, ride, ridge, ridicule, riding, rife, riffle, rifle, rift, rig, right, rigid, rigor, rigour, rile, rill, rim, rime, rind, ring, ringer, ringlet, ringmaster, ringside, rink, rinse, riot, riotous, rip, ripe, ripen, rip-off, riposte, ripper, ripping, ripple, rise, riser, rising, risk, risky, risqué, rissole, rite, ritual, rival, river, rivet, roach, road, roam, roan, roar, roast, rob, robber, robe, robin, robot, robotics, robust, rock, rocker, rockery, rocket, rocky, rococo

Of these, the most significant (in terms of size) are ride, ring, and rise. But the range itself is very varied, after the uniformity of the re- words. Rhinoceros shows medieval and Early Modern writers coming to terms with the extraordinary animal; rock 'n' roll documents the emergence and pervasiveness of another extraordinary animal of the 20th century and beyond. The first ‘rockets’ (mid sixteenth century) were fireworks; just after the end of the First World War, in 1919, we began to discuss rocket-powered projectiles. The revolutionary Tom Paine is currently the person first recorded (1782) as claiming that a politician would ‘rise like a rocket and fall like a stick’.

In line with the gradual extension of online searchable historical texts, it is perhaps not surprising that the percentage of words and senses antedated in this release has risen to just over 60% (from around 30% in the revised sections in 2000).

Restaurant reprised

Readers of last quarter's publication notes will know that, with the aid of numerous readers' contributions, we had identified 1821 as the year in which eating houses named ‘restaurants’ started to spring up in Britain and America. I'm grateful to those of you who have taken up the challenge to find still earlier references. The current version of the entry includes two early outliers: one, from 1815, describing coffee-houses and ‘an excellent restaurant’ in Paris; the other, from 1806, using the word in a translation of the ‘Regulations of the Literary Society of Antwerp’.

The word is recorded in its modern sense in French from at least 1771, so it is possible the other earlier uses may be discovered. But at present the establishment of such establishments in New York and London can still be dated to 1821.