Return to sender — searching for the origin of ‘email’

Oxford English Dictionary asks for readers’ help in finding earliest use of word

Somewhere out there, during the early days of networked communication, somebody probably complained about a lengthy term and decided to do something about it. At that point, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary are guessing, “electronic mail” became “email” (or “e-mail”), and a cornucopia of e-prefixed words would follow over the next few decades.

For years, the OED editors have been asking the public to help them find documentation of the first time “email” was used — with no luck.

The OED recently renewed its plea for help in tracking down documentation of the first time someone wrote “email” or “e-mail” instead of “electronic mail.” The appeal has been online for three years — and the word has been an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary since 1989 — but the OED still doesn’t have a verifiable instance of the word’s first use.

“You’re tempted to think that someone said in some message board, ‘I’m tired of typing out electronic mail. Can we just call it email?’ ” said Katherine Martin, head of U.S. dictionaries for Oxford University Press. “Something that’s truly unique like this, you expect there to be a single person.”

Right now, the earliest use the editors can find dates to 1979, from a headline in the scientific journal Electronics: “Postal Service pushes ahead with E-mail.”

“Sometimes, you think, we haven’t had any results because there’s nothing earlier out there,” Martin said. “For email, there are a couple reasons that seem important to continue to look at it.”

For one thing, Martin explained, the citation simply “doesn’t look like a coinage.” To the 1979 readers of Electronics, the idea that “E” meant “electronic” would be a large leap to make. The prefix simply didn’t exist before email, Martin said, and it seems very unlikely that a journal would decide to go ahead and put “e-mail” in a headline if readers weren’t already at least somewhat familiar with the term.

“It’s not something you’d expect people to understand if it wasn’t al- ready in use,” Martin said.

These OED appeals, in some form, date back to the 19th-century origins of the dictionary. The earliest printed appeals asked the public to read specific books and look for quotations involving any notable words. Soon, the dictionary’s first editor, James Murray, tweaked his strategy: he sent out lists of words for which he needed quotations.

“We will from time to time print and circulate among our existing Readers lists of the verbal desiderata discovered in the course of arranging and working up the materials already in hand,” reads an appeal pamphlet from 1879.

The pamphlet explains that the dictionary’s editors were looking for quotations for three reasons: First, some words didn’t have any quotations demonstrating their use, or only one and the editors simply needed more; second, some words needed more current quotations; and third, as is still the case with many of today’s online appeals, the editors needed to find earlier — ideally the earliest — use of a particular word. Finding that first quotation is called “antedating” by lexicographers.

Since 2012, the OED’s editors have been appealing online for help tracking down early quotations of words, old and new, when editors don’t think they have the full story of a word’s origins and usage. The editors ask readers to leave comments — available for the public to read — directing editors toward any leads or quotations that might fit the bill. The editors respond to those requests as they come in, also in the comments, and when the word is successfully antedated, the appeal is closed.

Many of these appeals have been successful, such as the ones for “bromance” and “FAQ,” and the use of “the Company” to refer to the CIA.

The email appeal has generated a few responses, Martin said, but nothing verifiable yet. It’s likely that the antedating they’re looking for lies in archived messages held by someone involved in the creation or the early implementation of what we’d recognize as emails today. If that’s the case, the editors are hoping one of those people will hear that the OED is looking for them and respond.

“In a way, that’s what the appeal is intended to do: to request that any of those people who were involved in those things step forward,” Martin said.