Debunking the Roots of Boredom

Oct. 10, 2014 4:58 pm

Categories: Counterknowledge, Dysology

Keywords: Boredom, coined, dickens, etymology, mike sutton, Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian, OED

Postscript 17th October 2014.

I wrote a new blog post today (here) to discuss the problem of the Smithsonian Magazine's apparently weird refusal, in certain areas at least, to examine the veracity of anything outside what is written in the Oxford Dictionary .

Today, the Smithsonian Magazine chose to ignore the fact that much of what is in the Oxford English Dictionary can be proven 100% wrong with the new Big Data technology of ID. Instead, they write - in effect - that they prefer to publish independently verifiable proven claptrap just so long as it is published in the Oxford English Dictionary. We now know that is so because, in light of the new discovery published below, they wrote to say as much on Twitter today.

Have the principles of the 17th century age of enlightenment - that new facts trump old claptrap regardless of the status of the discoverer - passed them by in the 21st century? - See the full conversation by clicking here

@supermyths @smithsonian Thanks - but we look to @OED as a valued resource, who still put Dickens as the first usage http://ow.ly/CT8jf

On Boredom

Public Domain

At the time of writing (10/October/2014), it appears to be universally accepted that Charles Dickens coined the word boredom (e.g. Cryer 2010) in English in his novel Bleak House, which was first published in 1852. Of course, Wikipedia – can be relied upon to have it equally wrong: “The first recorded use of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens , written in 1852."

What the Dickens is going on?

The Internet is awash with notable institutions disseminating the myth that Dickens coined the word Boring. Even the mighty Smithsonian - via its official magazine - is in on promoting the fallacy, as is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) .

Perhaps one or both of these great institutions of 'knowledge' and 'truth' and 'veracity' and others would like to employ me to go over all their webpages and associated publications to face savingly correct all their multitudinously embarrassing errors of etymological fact?

Big Data Strikes Again!

Trumpet from the rooftopsPublic Domain

Big Data

Once again, the ability to search over 30 million books in an instant reveals that all the textbooks have once again got it wrong. The newly available ID Big Data research method (see Sutton 2014) reveals that the word 'boredom' was - ho hum - used at least as early as 1829, which is 23 years earlier: Catherine Grace Frances Gore (1829) Romances of Real Life, Volume 2. Page 99 .

She also used the word 'bored' on page 107.