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Historical Usage Fail
Jul. 31st, 2009 08:25 pmOkay, so I am slogging through C.C. Finlay's The Patriot Witch.
The use of entirely contemporary locutions for dialog that is supposed to be set in 1776 Massachusetts has been bothering me throughout, but Finlay does mostly okay whenever his main character can stop flopping around on the deck about how he's let various others down and must set it all right for long enough to actually do something. The action sequences are reasonably engaging. The zombies were a nice touch.
Except. Except now we're on the patriot lines above the siege of Boston, and two officers are conferring. The officer commanding the local troops offers to cede command to a more senior visiting officer. The more senior officer declines. The commanding officer says, and I quote, "There is no ego involved. I would be honored to pass the command to you."
No ego involved? No frickin' EGO? Mega FAIL. "Ego" in the sense of self-esteem, pride, or self-importance, is an entirely modern usage. OED dates it to 1891 at the earliest, and I would bet it didn't hit the common coin until well after 1900, and the rising star of Sigmund Freud. But in any event, it post-dates 1776 by well over a bloody century.
Oh, I don't know why I'm surprised. A few dozen pages earlier, we had a smuggler speak of women as "the fair gender". Sigh. As a euphemism for the sex of a human being, the earliest citation the OED can find for gender is 1963. Or close to 200 years later than the book.
While earlier still we have an 18th century farmer using the construction "not so much" as a particle to negate a whole sentence, and an 18th century teenage female using the word "hot" to describe an man's attractiveness. 21st century usage, anyone?
Does anyone actually copy edit over at Del Rey? Not so much.
The use of entirely contemporary locutions for dialog that is supposed to be set in 1776 Massachusetts has been bothering me throughout, but Finlay does mostly okay whenever his main character can stop flopping around on the deck about how he's let various others down and must set it all right for long enough to actually do something. The action sequences are reasonably engaging. The zombies were a nice touch.
Except. Except now we're on the patriot lines above the siege of Boston, and two officers are conferring. The officer commanding the local troops offers to cede command to a more senior visiting officer. The more senior officer declines. The commanding officer says, and I quote, "There is no ego involved. I would be honored to pass the command to you."
No ego involved? No frickin' EGO? Mega FAIL. "Ego" in the sense of self-esteem, pride, or self-importance, is an entirely modern usage. OED dates it to 1891 at the earliest, and I would bet it didn't hit the common coin until well after 1900, and the rising star of Sigmund Freud. But in any event, it post-dates 1776 by well over a bloody century.
Oh, I don't know why I'm surprised. A few dozen pages earlier, we had a smuggler speak of women as "the fair gender". Sigh. As a euphemism for the sex of a human being, the earliest citation the OED can find for gender is 1963. Or close to 200 years later than the book.
While earlier still we have an 18th century farmer using the construction "not so much" as a particle to negate a whole sentence, and an 18th century teenage female using the word "hot" to describe an man's attractiveness. 21st century usage, anyone?
Does anyone actually copy edit over at Del Rey? Not so much.
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