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.

to piss on from a great height (v.: to humiliate utterly) antedate 1992
pocket-burner (n.: something expensive) antedate 2001
polygraph (n.: an instrument, operating on the principle of the pantograph, for simultaneously producing two or more identical copies of a drawing, document, etc.) antedate 1803
pony (n.: an act of defecation; faeces; nonsense) antedate 1958
pony (a.: worthless, useless) antedate 1964
pony and trap (n.: an act of defecation; faeces; nonsense) any non-glossarial evidence
poo(h) (n.: faeces, as a count noun) antedate 1981
poo(h) (v.: to defecate) antedate 1975
poorness (n.: poverty, indigence) interdate 1797–1932
pop-gun (v.: to shoot a popgun at) any evidence of literal sense
pop sock (n.) antedate 1972
popstrel (n.: a young pop musician) antedate 1989
popular beat combo (n.) antedate 1990
pork scratchings (n.) antedate 1982
to make a porridge (v.: to make a mess) antedate 1969
portrayment (n.) postdate 1891
postless (a.: without a postal service) postdate 1934
postlike (a.: resembling a wooden post) interdate 1617–1976
post-maritally (adv.) antedate 1952

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