'Hobo' a Month Older Than Thought

I've learned a second new word this weekend: antedater.

The main playing field for competitive antedaters is the e-mail list of the American Dialect Society (americandialect.org): that's where researchers post their new finds for the record (which also serve as challenges for others to beat). Antedaters take especial delight in finding uses earlier than those shown in the OED (and in knowing their work will be picked up on by Oxford editors). Since August, the list has seen the antedating of "hydrant" pushed back to 1801 from 1828, "hobo" to September 1888 (from only a month later), and "jamboree" (meaning "a large party") to 1858, back from 1861. [Link]

This would seem a perfect sideline for genealogists. Keep an eye out for hoboes while prowling through old newspapers in search of ancestors.

The First To Go 'Here Goes'

Letters from Robert Godlonton discovered in an English attic are of both historical and lexicographical interest.

They provide a vivid image of the settlers' arrival in southern Africa in 1820 and their struggle to establish a colony.

The find could even lead to an update of the Oxford English Dictionary as the correspondence contains the earliest recorded use of the phrase "here goes".

Mr Godlonton writes: "As I promised when at home to give you a full and particular account, here goes to begin. We arrived..." [Link]