Continuing with my last post, I’ve become
fascinated with when words first appeared in the English language and have been
using as a source, English Through the
Ages, which records when specific words came into common usage. Since I
write mystery novels here are a few words that I find interesting.
I have a historical mystery set in 1919 that uses
fingerprinting as a clue. Fingerprint was first used as a noun in 1860 and as a
verb in 1905. DNA made its appearance in 1935 with DNA fingerprinting in 1985.
The word police came into usage in 1720. Detective
and police station appeared in 1845 and private investigator and private eye in
1940.
A few other random words: prisoner of war in 1680
and autism and autistic in 1915.
I could go on forever, but this is today’s sampling.
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