Interesting background to the publishing of the OED. eg the individual readers: https://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/quotations/reading-and-readers/individuals Eg, the insane American surgeon in Broadmoor prison
One lexicographer wrote: Readers may be divided into four classes: the good, the bad, the indifferent, and the dishonourable, writing in 1880 about readers searching books for words for the first edition.
It’s interesting language. The positive numbers, the negative numbers and the imaginary numbers. The good, the bad and the ugly, as mentioned in ##English on the freenode irc network.
OED1 (1928) and OED2 (1989) didn’t find the verb ‘mirror’ before an 1820 use by Keats, even though the noun ‘mirror’ is found in Middle English. But, OED3 (in progress) found citations for ‘mirror’ as a verb in 1410 and 1592 works already read and quoted by OED1 lexicographers.
Back to WobblyEnglish