Appeals

Words or phrases which appear on the Appeals List are those currently being drafted or revised for the OED for which the documentary evidence is incomplete. Often these are slang or colloquial items which cannot be researched in specialist texts and are most likely to be found by a general reader in non-specialized or popular literature.

Usually the appeal is for an earlier example than our current earliest (e.g. ‘antedate 1970’ for a word for which our earliest example comes from 1970), but sometimes the appeal is for an interdating where there is a large gap in the OED's quotation evidence (e.g. ‘interdate 1589-1910’). Occasionally we ask for a postdating (e.g. ‘postdate 1875’), if an editor feels that an item being revised is still current but has failed to find any recent examples through the usual avenues of research.

Please note: it is generally safe to assume that examples found by searching the Web, using search engines such as Google, will have already been considered by OED editors.

donkey (n.: (S. Afr.) primitive water-heating device)

antedate 1997

overplot (v.: to provide with an excessively complex plot)

antedate 1961

peak (v.: (chiefly N.Z.) to baulk, fail to ‘deliver’)

postdate 1971

peasy (a.: very easy)

antedate 1989 (cf. easy peasy, currently documented from 1976)

pegall (n.: kind of covered basket)

postdate 1936

peg doll (n.)

antedate 1950

pelter (n.: animal, person, etc., capable of moving fast)

postdate 1901

pemmicanize (v.: compress, condense)

postdate 1935

plank (n.: stupid or inept person)

antedate 1981; also any evidence of 1980s use outside NW England

plinky-plonk (a.)

antedate 1971

plinky-plonky (a.)

antedate 1989

pot (also pot down) (v.: to cook, stew)

any (esp. 20th-century) evidence

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