# How to research English/American word history? (No OED!)



## aquashe

Does anybody know how to research history of words?
I need to research history of certain words in details.
For instance: I need to find out when a word "toothless"
was transferred to America (as it was first documented
in Britain, in 1398). I'm using Oxford English Dictionary
and I'm checking every single usage of a certain word
to find out if it was published in Britain or in America,
but in a few cases there are no American publications
at all (however it is known that the word is now
used in both areas). Are there any other possibilities
to find such information except for OED?


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## CapnPrep

Words like _toothless_ that pre-date the colonial era and are part of everyday vocabulary will have been "transferred to America" and to other British colonies the moment the first English speakers set foot there. In cases like this, sources like the OED are not particularly concerned with tracking down the earliest written attestations region by region. Let's say the first known American text containing _toothless_ is from 1700 (I have no idea, just making up the date). That doesn't mean that the colonists at Jamestown waited around for a century for this word to finally arrive from England; it can be safely assumed, I think, that the word was in use from the very beginning of the colony.

Could you give us the full list of words you're interested in? If they're all ordinary words like _toothless_, then I don't know of a source that will give you specifically American attestations. The Google Ngram Viewer (based on the huge but noisy Google Books database) has separate American and British English corpora, but I don't really know how reliable their classification is.


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## aquashe

I've just checked that Ngram Viewer tool and I don't find it reliable.
I looked for the first usage of the word "toothless" in American English and
it showed that it must have been somewhere around 1681. I checked
the locations of publications of the "American" books with this word 
around this year and it gave me results with books published in London...

The whole thing is about researching why certain words in a certain British book
were changed by an American editor to American words, so that
the American audience could have an easier access.

I also don't know why a phrase "hamburger bars" was changed to
"hamburger restaurants" in American English.

And there were others but I don't have the list with me here now.
Out of a list of 50 pairs of changed words and phrases I need to 
research let's say - 8 of them (not sure if everything is right
and maybe some of the earlier described ones I will have to rewrite).


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## CapnPrep

What is the book, and what year was it published (in Britain and in the US)? If it mentions hamburgers, I'm guessing it's from the 20th century, in which case attestations from earlier centuries will be of little use. You may find that one word was attested hundreds of years before another word, but that doesn't tell you how speakers actually use either word. 

It would be more useful to compare frequency measures in American and British English for your word pairs around the publication date of the book, and Google Ngrams can help you with that. The data for the 20th century should be more reliable.

By the way, what was the word _toothless_ changed to in the American edition?


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## aquashe

Actually, it was British "gummy" changed to American "toothless".

And the book is "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in Britain and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the USA.

I also think that looking for "hamburger bar/restaurant" in OED doesn't make sense,
but I need to find out why the American editor decided to change it.
I need to find out why in America hamburgers are eaten in restaurants and not bars
and I need to have a source for it - not a forum. A forum is only to ask for directions, with all due respect to the forum users.


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## CapnPrep

aquashe said:


> I also think that looking for "hamburger bar/restaurant" in OED doesn't make sense,
> but I need to find out why the American editor decided to change it.


Because of this, compared to this. You can also check the plural forms. And consider not only when the book was written, but also the age of the author.

Is this an assignment for a class? If so, I think you have enough directions to continue on your own…


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## aquashe

Yes, I'm writing a paper on that. And that is why I need a serious source. Unfortunately, I think that they won't be satisfied when I use that Ngram tool. OED is reliable... but I don't know about that Ngram modern tool... Well, no idea what to do now.

Are you an American? If so, what do you imagine when you read "hamburger bar" and "hamburger restaurant"?
Can it have anything in common with globalisation and mcdonald's and kfc restaurants?
Or maybe in America bars are mostly to meet people and drink alcoholic drinks?

I just need to find an article about that cultural difference, and I'm looking for it right now but so far all I get is comparison of British pubs and American bars.


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## berndf

aquashe said:


> Actually, it was British "gummy" changed to American "toothless".
> 
> And the book is "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in Britain and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the USA.


You are most likely investigating the wrong word. There is probably no relevant usage difference concerning the word _toothless_. You would rather want to ask yourself why the American editors found it necessary to replace _gummy _with a near synonym. Indeed, the relevant meaning of _gummy, _"showing one's gums", is missing in Webster's which only contains the meanings "sticky, viscous", "consisting or containing gum" and "covered with gum". You would then want to ask yourself, if this is due to a usage change in American English (i.e. the meaning fell into disuse) at all or whether "showing one's gums" isn't maybe an innovation in British English. To investigate the first possibility you would want to search historical American English dictionaries; to investigate the second possibility, the OED should be the right place to look.



aquashe said:


> I checked the locations of publications of the "American" books with this word around this year and it gave me results with books published in London...


It is customary to fix the British/American English split at the year 1750. This of course doesn’t mean that in 1749 they were one language and in 1751 they were distinct. But for practical purposes you need some kind of approximate date. You would therefore assume historical corpuses of English to apply the distinction only after that date. This is not a peculiarity of NGRAM viewer.

Furthermore, until the mid 19th century you will find many books by American author being published in England as America was lacking sufficiently developed publishing industry in the early decades of the nation.


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## Hulalessar

aquashe said:


> I need to find out why the American editor decided to change it.



I think that the question the American editor asked him/herself was this: "If J.K.Rowling had been American and was writing for an American readership what would she have written?" No American is going to be puzzled by what "toothless" means; it is just that in the particular context it was used the editor concluded that an American author would have used "gummy". The key thing is that whilst words are defined in dictionaries the overtones that go with them do not always get covered. The sort of changes made are likely to reflect the subtle differences in the use of words not recorded in dictionaries.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> The sort of changes made are likely to reflect the subtle differences in the use of words not recorded in dictionaries.


In this case it is. See my post above.


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## CapnPrep

I found this site cataloguing differences between the original UK and the American editions of Harry Potter:
The Harry Potter Lexicon

This site gives more context for many examples from the first book (_Philosopher's Stone_/_Sorcerer's Stone_):
Harry Potter: British/American text comparison

Here is the _toothless_ example:


UK: A little man in a top hat was talking to the old *barman*, who was quite bald and looked like a *gummy* walnut.
US: A little man in a top hat was talking to the old *bartender*, who was quite bald and looked like a *toothless* walnut.
 
See also the following threads:
differences harry potter
tote bag/hold-all
courgette / zucchini
British "baker's opposite" vs American "bakery" (another thread by the OP)
Words originating in BrE in AmE, CaE, AuE after 1600s
Origin of vocabulary and spelling differences British vs. American English


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## aquashe

Thank you, but I've had this page with the comparison showing context printed for a long time.

And second, some of the threads you linked I started myself.

That's tough as hell and in some cases I doubt that it's doable.
But thanks.


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## berndf

aquashe said:


> That's tough as hell and in some cases I doubt that it's doable.


Often enough it won't, as CapnPrep said in the other thread.

Let me repeat one thing I said before: Don't jump to the conclusion that differences are always due to changes in AmE. Often enough it was BrE. In many aspects, AmE is the more conservative or the two varieties.


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## merquiades

I think "hamburger bar" sounds weird in the US because "bars" are places you go to have beverages.
"Gummy" is understood in America but it is not so common.  "Toothless" however is in daily use at all registers, even children say it.  If you keep "gummy" perhaps it would seem bookish to an American and give off another connotation than the one sought out by the author.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> I think "hamburger bar" sounds weird in the US because "bars" are places you go to have beverages.


What about a snack bar? Salad bar? I agree that we don't normally say _hamburger bar_ (anymore), but I doubt there is any deep reason why not. It also would not come naturally to me to say _hamburger restaurant_; I think I would prefer _hamburger place_, or _burger joint_.


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:


> What about a snack bar? Salad bar? I agree that we don't normally say _hamburger bar_ (anymore), but I doubt there is any deep reason why not. It also would not come naturally to me to say _hamburger restaurant_; I think I would prefer _hamburger place_, or _burger joint_.



I wouldn't say _snack bar_ but it's true _salad bar_ is the only way I know of to refer to a self-serve prepared salad buffet.  I bet it has more to do with the concept of "bar" meaning "counter" where they put down the salads.
I could say _hamburger restaurant_ for a more high-quality establishment like a diner with waitstaff, real plates, forks and knives.  _Hamburger place_ and _burger joint_ could be fast food or take out too.  _Burger joint_ is colloquial only.


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## JulianStuart

aquashe said:


> I've just checked that Ngram Viewer tool and I don't find it reliable.


Dismissing a huge resource like the google database simply because it is not *100*% reliable seems like an unwise response in your situation.  All analytical tools have some sort of "experimental error" and the traditional way to live with this is to acknowledge it and interpret the results accordingly.  If I can make a length measurement with an accuracy of ±1 metre, I cannot say lengths of 10.5 and 10.7 m are different.  However, I can say that 100 m and 150 m are different.  

The Ngrams for hamburger bar and restaurant, comparing AmE and BrE presented above, are revealing and pertinent to your research.  You just have to figure out how to interpret/present them meaningfully.  I also was curious as to how the distinction was made (between AmE and BrE) and found it was based on publishing location of the publications used.  You will find some interesting comparisons to illuminate both the limitations of the database and the fuzziness of the issue of what usage occurred when and where - with the divergence starting around "1750ish".  You can use current shibboleth pairs such as colour/color, practising/practicing etc to estimate the errors but it wil be confounded by the passage of time and the divergence rate as well as, obviously, the publisher location uncertainty. 

By entering the following  (color:eng_us_2012),(colour:eng_gb_2012),(colour:eng_us_2012),(color:eng_gb_2012)  into the search box for the Google print database, we can generate a plot of the frequency of use of both spellings with both AmE and BrE on one plot. I compared the US and GB databases. This is a revealing plot - it provides some frame of reference for the interpretation of other plots which rely on (imperfect) categorization into AmE and BrE.  It essentially provides a measure of "reliability".
 
(practising:eng_us_2012),(practicing:eng_gb_2012),(practicing:eng_us_2012),(practising:eng_gb_2012)  That's another that shows the similar starting point (around 1800) and the appearance in AmE of the current form and the rate of divergence to the current state of affairs.  Presenting something like those pairs to characterize the tool will allow you to show Ngrams of your words (or phrases) of interest and interpret them appropriately for a thesis.  Not quite as quantitatively satisfying as the example above (where the methods section of the thesis simply defines the precision and accuracy of the length measurements presented in the work) but still acceptable.  Collecting dictionary citations would seem way too anecdotal (and therefore of less weight) and potentially biased (how would you asssess their accuracy of overall usage frequency, rather than isolated examples?).  The number of works in the google book database has enormous statistical power, even though it has its limitations as noted.


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## JulianStuart

aquashe said:


> ...
> but I need to find out why the American editor decided to change it.


Have you tried to contact the editor(s)?  I think you know why they did, but you would like to know the criteria they used in their determination of _which_ to change.  That may or may not have much (quantitatively) to do with what's in current dictionaries, but rather some style guide*, possibly supplemented even by web-based lists of "Differences between AmE and BrE"  This is not the first book to be "Americanized"


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