New #anime entry for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction, published after a large amount of work: "Akira slide". Best we have is only 2009, despite the fact that there are visual homages from very soon after the 1988 movie; we'd welcome any antedatings!
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Jesse Sheidlower
@jessesheidlower@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Lexicographer. http://sfdictionary.com. The F-Word. Ex-OED. Past President, American Dialect Society. Adjunct at Columbia. Coder. Barbells. Threesome Tollbooth bar manager.
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Joined October 28, 2022
New entry for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: As you know, we are obsessed with time travel, so we're delighted to bring you the verb form of "time-slip". From 1974 (describing an Aldiss story) onwards.
#Fandom antedating of the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "neopro", a new professional writer, from Robert Silverberg in 1967 to Bob Tucker in 1960.
Unusually important antedating o'the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "time-travel" v., from 1933 to 1928. (OED has 1937.) (Also cleaned up the rest of the entry.)
Today's #fandom update for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "fillo", a filler illustration in a fanzine. We'd had 1959 with a claim of a 1954 coinage; we now have two solid 1954 examples.
As promised, some more big "filk" antedates for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "filk" v. from 1978 to 1962; "filker" from 1981 to (the same) 1962, & "filking" from 1983 to 1976. #Fandom
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1005/filk
https://sfdictionary.com/view/181/filker
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1361/filking
Important #fandom antedating for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "SMOF", for Secret Master of Fandom, said to have been in use at the 1963 Worldcon, now has an actual example from 1963.
Incredibly trivial antedating for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "ish", an issue (of a periodical), from November 1937 to October 1937. But, bonus Esperanto context!
New entries for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: the long-awaited "dieselpunk", coined in 2001:
https://sfdictionary.com/view/3039/dieselpunk
https://sfdictionary.com/view/3079/dieselpunk
Back from vacation, and happy to report a one-year antedating of the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction for the fan term "fugghead", to 1948, sent in by Jeff Prucher (I should have more to say about his project very soon!).
#Fandom antedating of the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "condom", a jocular term for the milieu of SF conventions, from 1986 to 1968.
Important #fandom antedatings for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction, for "mundane": the rare "non-SF story" sense from 1946 to '43; "non-SF fan" from '63 to '60; "non-SFnal" adj. from '45 to '38.
https://sfdictionary.com/view/2462/mundane
https://sfdictionary.com/view/989/mundane
https://sfdictionary.com/view/191/mundane
Today's #fandom antedatings for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "filksing" n. from 1968 to 1961, and "filk singing" from 1965 to ca1961. Stay tuned for more "filk"-related antedatings next week!
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1028/filksing
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1362/filksinging
Two small but fascinating #fandom antedatings for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction, for "loc" 'letter of comment':
The noun by 1 year, first appearing in text written in Japanese by English speakers (thanks to @erikas.online for her help with this):
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1892/loc
And the verb, also by 1 year to 1961, in a poem by Roger Ebert. Yes, *that* Roger Ebert!
Observation: most major dictionaries (Merriam, Dictionary.com, American Heritage, Cambridge, Collins, etc.) only define _die_ (or _dice_) as a six-sided cube; no recognition of other shapes as used e.g. in TTRPGs. (OED, in an unrevised entry, allows for this in passing.)
#Fandom antedating of the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "conreport", from 1953 to Ray Nelson in 1949.
For those interested in how Tolkien was first exposed to Welsh, here's an article from the Journal of Tolkien Research with pictures of the Welsh coal-wagons Tolkien would have seen in as a child in Birmingham:
https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol23/iss1/11/
Today's antedating for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: the fan term "apazine" 'an individual fanzine distributed by an APA', from 1953 to 1948 (plus a [1942] in the form "fapazine"). Also, tweaked the defs of this and "APA".
Important post by Jeff Prucher (editor of the Hugo-winning Brave New Words) about developing a corpus of fanzines to find antedatings for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction. (I'll be publishing these in due course.) Interesting for DH as well as SF people!
Today's extremely trivial antedating for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "illo", an illustration, from 1945 to Forrest J. Ackerman in late 1944.
#Fandom antedating of the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "fan film", a film made by fans, from 1961 to 1956 (in reference to the same film).
Replying to
I have to imagine there are other examples of "ship" referring to something that travels in space from proto-SF sources: Please find them and send them to me!
New entries for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "stim", for a (chemical) stimulant, and its derivatives "stim pill" and "stimtab". 1950s onwards, famous authors.
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1427/stim
https://sfdictionary.com/view/1428/stim-pill
https://sfdictionary.com/view/3082/stimtab
Antedating o'the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "RealSoonNow", fannish = "eventually", from 1959 (glossarial) to [1953], 1958. (The '53 example, while fannish, seems to be literal.) Also updated the def to clarify the irony. From Jeff Prucher.
Antedating o'the day for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "actifan", fr 1941 to 1940 (ref to Forrest J. Ackerman).
Delighted to announce that this was sent in by Jeff Prucher, editor of the Hugo-winning Brave New Words, who is contributing once again!
More new entries for interstellar-travel fans, in the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: Today's batch: "Arcturan" + vars., with 2 nouns +1 adj. From 1920 onwards, still in broad use.
https://sfdictionary.com/view/3061/arcturan
https://sfdictionary.com/view/3066/arcturan
https://sfdictionary.com/view/3068/arcturan
Replying to
Now also brought this up to date, with cites from the last few decades.
Replying to
@rjbs
Yes, I have a few examples of that, but _only_ from that story (in the original 1954 serial publication as well). But no one else seems to use it.
There was a lot of psionics and related stuff in the 1950s, yeah.... Aside from Bester's _The Demolished Man_, I don't need much of it.
Replying to
@grumpybozo @rjbs
That's a coincidence; this word is 'the state of being an esper [i.e. person with ESP]'
@grammargirl@zirk.us
The people who respond to such queries, or who complain to news organizations about the purported misuse of shibboleths, are a very, very, very tiny proportion of language users.
Replying to
@beeostrowsky@tech.lgbt
Yeah this was a weird one.
Replying to
@beeostrowsky@tech.lgbt
Huh, could have sworn I'd done that. Thanks.