Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
Lawrence Bryan
lebryan at speakeasy.org
Thu May 3 15:27:00 CDT 2007
1647 - H. More, "Song of Soul"-The preterition of life is the
preterition of time.
1609 - Br. W. Barlow, "Answ Nameless Cath" - His voluntarie but
subtile preter-ition in leauing out all the other disasters in the Oath.
1612 - T. Taylor, "Comm Titus" - The Apostle thankfully remembereth
their diligent love; and yet ... by a wise rhetorical preterition
exhorteth them vnto it.
to copy three of the ten or so examples.
I'm not sure of the value of these quotes as far as TRP is concerned
unless we have some evidence that he used the OED to find subtle or
rare meanings of words he used. On the other hand The Concise Oxford
Dictionary would be of no help in understanding his use of the word
"preterite" and doesn't mention "preterition". I must have used my
old, 1936, Webster's Unabridged when reading GR the first time.
Lawrence, still trying to catch up with the reading... too busy this
spring and now off to South America until May 20th. At this rate it
will be September before I've caught up.
On May 3, 2007, at 12:36 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:
On May 3, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Ya Sam wrote:
> It goes without saying that OED is the best companion when hunting
> down obscure words in Pynchon but it is unlikely that I'll ever get
> the 20 volume set. Hence my question: Does anyone here have the 2
> volume SOED? Is it enough for you when reading logomaniac authors,
> would you recommend it?
Well, I just used the SOED this morning to check on when the word
'preterition' (Pynchon's springboard to his 'poor preterite souls')
was first used in a theological sense.
That all it told me was L17 (late 17th Century) illustrates a
weakness in the shorter version of the OED.
The full OED would have pinned the time down more precisely. Would
probably even have provided a quotation.
P.
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