However OED says that some recorded uses of the name predate 1830, and hence this theory is discredirted.

The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) says that the word puss is common to several Germanic languages, usually as a call name for the cat — not a synonym for cat, as it is in English.

The OED says,

" This represents Arabic sandarus also sandalus, but the Arabic word cannot be native Arabic ", says the OED.

The story of Murray and Minor later served as the central focus of a popular 20th-century book about the creation of the OED.

It was around this time that J. R. R. Tolkien was employed by the OED, researching etymologies of the Waggle to Warlock range ; he parodied the principal editors as " The Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford " in the story Farmer Giles of Ham.

It tells the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) and one of its most prolific early contributors, Dr. W. C. Minor, a retired United States Army surgeon.

This story is not verified by historical sources-the name draws on the definition of leap: " The sudden fall of a river to a lower level " ( OED ) and is named after William Romaine Govett, an assistant to the Surveyor General of NSW at the time, who first came upon that spot in June 1831.

The term was also applied, according to OED, to " pirates who formerly infested the Ganges between Calcutta and Burhampore ".

* The expression of the " Gnomes of Zürich ", Swiss bankers pictured as diminutive creatures hoarding gold in subterranean vaults, was coined in 1956 by Harold Wilson and gained currency in the 1960s ( OED notes the New Statesman issue of 27 November 1964 as earliest attestation ).

The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) notes that the hogshead was first standardized by an act of Parliament in 1423, though the standards continued to vary by locality and content.

" This is a folk etymology, of which OED notes that it was " subsequently felt as if from ".

The first occurrence in English of " ontology " as recorded by the OED ( Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989 ) appears in Nathaniel Bailey's dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as ' an Account of being in the Abstract ' - though, of course, such an entry indicates the term was already in use at the time.

In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) was first used unofficially on the covers of the series and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes.

In 1933, it fully replaced the name in all occurrences to The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one volume supplement and more supplements came over the years until in 1989 when the second edition was published in twenty volumes.

Also in 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) was first used.

It was first defined by the OED as “ he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race ”, which gives 1936 as the first recorded use.

According to the OED, John Paul Scott coined the word " sociobiology " at a 1946 conference on genetics and social behaviour, and became widely used after it was popularized by Edward O. Wilson in his 1975 book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.

The OED in support of its explanation of the " quarter " in origin referring to the way the staff was made points to an early attestation of the term, dated to 1590,

( OED online first definition of ' back formation ' is from the definition of to burgle, which was first published in 1889.

By the time Harold had finished school and was preparing to leave for university, he had been responsible for over 27, 000 quotations that later appeared in the OED.

It was probably through his correspondence with the London booksellers that he heard of the call for volunteers from what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ).

' The OED distinguishes between a high fulham which was loaded so as to ensure a cast of 4, 5, or 6 ; and a low fulham, so as to ensure a cast of 1, 2, or 3 ).

Malaprop used in the linguistic sense was first used by Lord Byron in 1814 according to the OED.

Installation as nomenclature for a specific form of art came into use fairly recently ; its first use as documented by the OED was in 1969.

The term racism was defined by the OED as " he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race ", giving 1936 as the first recorded use.

The OED also states that the first use in print was in 1894 in the Daily Ardmoreite ( Ardmore, Oklahoma ) newspaper, in which it was written " honk-a-tonk ".

However, the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) notes that " browning " was only introduced in the early 19th century, well after the term had come into general use.

The OED records the first usage of gung-ho in 1942 ( referring to Evans Carlson's Marines ) and of kung-fu in 1966 ( referring to Bruce Lee's movies ).

The current on-line edition of the OED ( Draft Revision September 2008 ) gives as first occurrence in English a work by Gideon Harvey ( 1636 / 7-1702 ): Archelogia philosophica nova ; or, New principles of Philosophy.

Evidence for this etymology comes from the OED, which notes the name " shark " first came into use after Sir John Hawkins ' sailors exhibited one in London in 1569 and used the word " sharke " to refer to the large sharks of the Caribbean Sea.

Etymologically, according to the OED, the word matriarchy is first attested in 1885, building on an earlier matriarch, formed in analogy to patriarch, already in use in the early 17th century.

The son of Sir James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, he attended school at Mill Hill and during his spare time helped his father produce the first edition of the OED.

The first edition of the OED lists fluter as dating from circa 1400 and Fowler's Modern English Usage states that " there seems no good reason " why flautist should have prevailed over fluter or flutist.

The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ), which published its complete first edition in 1933, challenged Merriam in scholarship, though not in the marketplace due to its much larger size.

The OED credits Francis Bacon in his Essays ( 1605 ) with the first use of " Cabinet council ", where it is described as a foreign habit, of which he disapproves: " For which inconveniences, the doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings ’ times, hath introduced cabinet counsels ; a remedy worse than the disease ".

The first listed reference as a knock-out drop in the OED, " Wish I had a drink and a Mike Finn for him ", is from a March 11, 1924 article in the New York Evening Journal.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ), the term bumblebee was first recorded as having been used in the English language in the 1530 work Lesclarcissement by John Palsgrave, " I bomme, as a bombyll bee dothe.

" However the OED also states that the term humble bee predates it, having first been used in 1450 in Fysshynge wyth Angle, " In Juyll the greshop & the humbylbee in the medow.

The first sense of " assume " in the OED is " to take unto ( oneself ), receive, accept, adopt .” The term was originally employed in religious contexts as in “ to receive up into heaven ,” especially “ the reception of the Virgin Mary into heaven, with body preserved from corruption ,” ( 1297 CE ) but it was also simply used to refer to “ receive into association ” or “ adopt into partnership .” Moreover, other senses of assumere included ( i ) “ investing oneself with ( an attribute ), ” ( ii ) “ to undertake ” ( especially in Law ), ( iii ) “ to take to oneself in appearance only, to pretend to possess ,” and ( iv ) “ to suppose a thing to be ” ( all senses from OED entry on “ assume ”; the OED entry for “ assumption ” is almost perfectly symmetrical in senses ).

The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ), published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language.

His Shakespeare Glossary was published in 1911, and in 1933 he co-edited the OED Supplement with William Craigie.

The Oxford University Press commissioned from the Fowler brothers a single-volume abridgement of the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ), which was published as the Concise Oxford Dictionary in 1911.

The OED credits an Illinois high school senior, Sharif Ford, with the earliest published use of the word in the March 8, 1989 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The OED also references mascaro from works published in the late 1400s.

The earliest example from the OED is from Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads ( published 1892 ): So ' ark an ' ' eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin ' sore, referring to rookies in the sense of raw recruits to the British Army.