I’ve posted the draft of Chapter 22, for those of you who are reading along with The Transfigured Lady.
[Edited to add on July 2 8:45pm PST: I made a significant plot change after posting. I recommend going to back to Chapter 21 start reading at the line, “”Good.” He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”]
Today’s phrase, which doesn’t exist in 1907, is “whispering campaign.” Annoying, because it’s such a good phrase but it doesn’t start in use until 1920.
Also of interest is “rinky-dink” which I tried to use in Chapter 21. It does exist, but means something totally different from today’s usage. I was double-checking and the only uses I found from the early 1900s were like:
“The few who are interested always get the “rinky dink,” as was said at the Council meeting this week. And if the rest of the people don’t like being “rinky dinked” they have themselves to blame.”
Or
“Say! me pals figured out dat I was croisy, or had got de Salvation Army fever, and I gets de rinky–dink shake from de gang for fair,” was the exact way in which Jack explained the disesteem into which he had fallen.
Baffled, I turned to the OED where I learned that at this point, rinky-dink means “to con.” While I was describing a medicine show as a “rinky-dink affair” and describing it as a con was not inaccurate, it wasn’t what I wanted the sentence to be doing.
I used the OED’s historical thesaurus to see what synonyms were available in 1907 and the one that was closest, in period use was… Honky-tonk.
Um. No.
No, that’s really not going to work in this context. I eventually settled on “a little tumble-over affair.” Language… I have such a love-hate relationship with it.
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You might find the American Dialect Society website useful http://www.americandialect.org .
Thanks!
Google’s Ngram Viewer shows uses of “whispering campaign” before 1907. And while the Google Books results for the 19th century include several things placed in the wrong years, this one pretty clearly seems to be from 1894, and the usage seems quite consistent with what one would expect.
But… but that would mean the OED was wrong.
When I look it up for my target years 1900-1907, I don’t find any examples at all. The ngram is consistent with it coming into use in 1920 so I’m inclined to go with the OED.
The OED is wrong. The document I linked to shows someone using it in its modern sense in 1894. Just because no one has submitted that particular usage example to the OED does not invalidate it as an example. (In fact, I’ll probably submit it to the OED as an antedating usage example.) The ngram chart shows it becoming really taking off in print around 1920, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t in use prior to that. In fact, I’d say a lot of phrases tended to be in use before they started being used commonly in print.
Of course, just because the above would justify its usage in your story does not mean that someone relying on the incomplete information in the OED would not pillory you for anachronism if you use the phrase. So perhaps using a different phrase is the wisest course.
I’ve also been burned by documents on Google Books that appeared to be from earlier than they are. So… with only one example, I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t in common usage, even if someone coined it earlier.
I’m guessing that using “Mickey Mouse” instead of “Rinky Dink” is not an improvement.
-d- You make me chuckle with that remark.
You have a fabulous blog! I want to award you with one of my homemade awards: Powerful Woman Writer Award for all the hard work you do!
I invite you to follow me, if you haven’t already done so, since we have a lot in common, but no pressure. I’m not giving you the award just so you will follow me. You really do deserve it!
Take care:-)
Go to [edited] and pick up your award.
~Deirdra