Dates

At most main entries a date will be found:

Main Entry: som.bre.ro
Function: noun
Etymology: Spanish, from sombra shade
Date: 1599
: a high-crowned hat of felt or straw with a very wide brim worn especially in the Southwest and Mexico

This is the date of the earliest recorded use in English, as far as it could be determined, of the sense which the date precedes. Several caveats are appropriate at this point. First, a few classes of main entries that are not complete words (as combining forms, prefixes, and suffixes) or are not generic words (as trademarks and names of figures from mythology) are not given dates. Second, the date given applies only to the first sense of the word entered in this dictionary and not necessarily to the word's very earliest meaning in English. Many words, especially those with long histories, have obsolete, archaic, or uncommon senses that are not entered in this dictionary, and such senses have been excluded from consideration in determining the date:

Main Entry: ¹slur
Function: noun
Etymology: obsolete English dialect slur thin mud, from Middle English sloor; akin to Middle High German slier mud
Date: 1609
1 a : an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo : aspersion . . .

The 1609 date is for a sense of slur synonymous with aspersion. Slur also has an obsolete sense, "thin mud," that was recorded as early as the fifteenth century; but since this sense is not entered, it is ignored for purposes of dating. Third, the printed date should not be taken to mark the very first time that the word -- or even the sense -- was used in English. Many words were certainly in spoken use for decades or even longer before they passed into the written language. The date is for the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover. This fact means further that any date is subject to change as evidence of still earlier use may emerge, and many dates given now can confidently be expected to yield to others in future editions.

A date will appear in one of three different styles:

Main Entry: put.tee
Function: noun
Etymology: Hindi patti strip of cloth, from Sanskrit pattika
Date: 1886
1 : a cloth strip wrapped around the leg from ankle to knee

Main Entry: ¹moon.light
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
: the light of the moon

Main Entry: ¹thrall
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English thral, from Old English thræl, from Old Norse thræll
Date: before 12th century
1 a : a servant slave : BONDMAN; also : SERF

The style that names a year (as 1886) is the one used for the period from the sixteenth century to the present. The style that names only a century (as "14th century") is the one used for the period from the twelfth century through the fifteenth century, a span that roughly approximates the period of Middle English. The style "before 12th century" is used for the period before the twelfth century back to the earliest records of English, a span that approximates the period of Old English. Words first attested after 1500 can usually be dated to a single year because the precise dates of publication of modern printed texts are known.

If a word must be dated from a modern text of uncertain chronology, it will be assigned the latest possible date of the text's publication prefixed by circa. For words from the Old and Middle English periods the examples of use on which the dates depend very often occur in manuscripts which are themselves of uncertain date and which may record a text whose date of composition is highly conjectural. To date words from these periods by year would frequently give a quite misleading impression of the state of our knowledge, and so the broader formulas involving centuries are used instead.

Each date reflects a particular instance of the use of a word, most often within a continuous text. In cases where the earliest appearance of a word dated by year is not from continuous text but from a source (as a dictionary or glossary) that defines or explains the word instead of simply using it, the year is preceded by circa:

Main Entry: magnesium sulfate
Function: noun
Date: circa 1890
: a sulfate of magnesium . . .

In such instances, circa indicates that while the source providing the date attests that the word was in use in the relevant sense at that time, it does not offer an example of the normal use of the word and thus gives no better than an approximate date for such use. For the example above no use has so far been found that is earlier than its appearance (spelled magnesium sulphate) as an entry in Webster's International Dictionary, published in 1890, so the date is given with the qualifying abbreviation.

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