Explanatory Notes

Dates 		Etymology Index   Usage

At most main entries and particularly at entries for complete generic words will be found a date enclosed in parentheses immediately preceding the boldface colon that introduces the first sense or preceding the boldface sense  e number, when one is present:

jal·ou·sie ...  n [F, lit., jealousy, fr. OF  jelous jealous] (1783)  1 : a blind with adjustable horizontal slats for admitting light and air while excluding sun and rain

This is the date of the earliest recorded use in English, as far as it could be determined, of the sense which the date precedes. Several caveats are appropriate at this point. First, a few classes of main entries that are not complete words (as prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, and letters of the English alphabet) or are not generic words (as trademarks and names of figures from mythology) are not given dates. Second, the date given is always for the first recorded use of the first entered sense and not necessarily of the word: many words, especially those with long histories, have obsolete, archaic, or uncommon senses that are not entered in this dictionary, and such senses have been excluded from consideration in determining the date:

2 launder  n [ME, launderer, fr. MF  lavandier, fr. ML  lavandarius, fr. L  lavandus, gerundive of  lavare to wash - more at LYE] (1667)  : TROUGH;  esp  : a box conduit conveying a particulate material suspended in water in ore dressing

The date 1667 is for the sense of  launder in which it is synonymous with  trough ; the word also has an obsolete sense ``one who washes clothes'' recorded as early as the fourteenth century, but as that sense is not entered it is ignored for the purpose of dating this main entry. Third, the printed date should not be taken to mark the very first time that the word - or even the sense - was used in English. Many words were certainly in spoken use for decades or even longer before they passed into the written language. The date is for the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover. This fact means further that any date is subject to change as evidence of still earlier use may emerge, and many dates given now can confidently be expected to yield to others in future printings and editions.

A date will appear in one of three different styles:
sans·cu·lotte ...  n [F  sans-culotte, lit., without breeches] (1790)  1 : an extreme radical republican in France at the time of the Revolution
cop·per·smith ...  n (14c)  : a worker in copper
1 lid ...  n [ME, fr. OE  hlid ; akin to OHG  hlit cover, OE  hlinian to lean - more at LEAN] (bef. 12c)  1 : a movable cover for the opening of a hollow container (as a vessel or box)
The style that names a year (as 1790) is the one used for the period from the sixteenth century to the present. The style that names only a century (as 14c) is the one used for the period from the twelfth century through the fifteenth century, a span that roughly approximates the period of Middle English. The style (bef. 12c) is used for the period before the twelfth century back to the earliest records of English, a span that approximates the period of Old English. For words from the Old and Middle English periods the examples of use on which the dates depend very often occur in manuscripts which are themselves of uncertain date and which may record a text whose date of composition is highly conjectural. To date words from these periods by year would frequently give a quite misleading impression of the state of our knowledge, and so the broader formulas involving centuries are used instead.

Each date reflects a particular instance of the use of a word, and examples from running text are considered the norm. In cases where the earliest appearance of a word dated by year is not from running text but from a source (as a dictionary or glossary) that defines or explains the word instead of simply using it, the year is preceded by an abbreviation for  circa :
magnesium sulfate  n (ca. 1890)  : a sulfate of magnesium ...
Ca. indicates that while the source providing the date attests that the word was in use in the relevant sense at that time, it does not offer an example of the normal use of the word and thus gives no better than an approximate date for such use. For the example above no use has so far been found that is earlier than its appearance (spelled  magnesium sulphate) as an entry in Webster's International Dictionary, published in 1890, so the date is given with the qualifying abbreviation.