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 post-dating (e.g. ‘post-date 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.

box standard (adj.: cf. bog-standard) antedate 1983
pampelmoes (n., in this spelling: South African name for a citrus fruit, esp. used to make marmalade) post-date 1980
private highway (n.: a private road) antedate 1724
procuratorate (n.: in China, a department of the law courts) antedate 1918
proke (v.: chiefly Irish English, to poke) any twentieth-century non-glossarial evidence
prosumer (n.: a consumer pro-active in the development of a product) antedate 1974
prosumer (n.: an amateur using products designed for professionals) antedate 1987
vox (n.: vocals, freq. as part of the credits on record sleeves, etc.) antedate 1984

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