now heres an interesting addition to my quest to find all old pronouns.
so, I bought a book. exciting, right? that book is the second edition of the merriam webster unabridged dictionary, printed from 1934 to 1961. this thing is fucking massive, its 11′ by 8.5′ by 4.5′ and weighs so much. i paid like 40 dollars for it. Anyway, i got this book because of this quote, on the merriam websters dictionary page: 'Thon', short for "that one," appeared in our Unabridged dictionary from 1934-1961. Though the word was dropped for lack of use, other gender-neutral pronouns—'they', 'their', and 'them'—remain.
This is cool, right? the article includes a picture of the entry, but that isn’t good enough for me, i need the book itself.
so, it came. guess whats missing?
thats right, the word i bought it for. this is super cool, to be honest. as frustrating as it is to still not have a physical copy of this entry, the exclusion of the word from this dictionary is Fascinating. why is it excluded?
i cant tell what year this specific dictionary is from, but i know it isnt an ‘early addition,’ as (apparently) the word Dord was in early editions but edited out of late prints because it was a mistake. Plus, the website says it was in every second edition dictionary from 1934-1961, which was all of them, so I would assume they all have thon, but obviously, they do not.
My only theories are that it is specifically only in the unabridged dictionary, whereas I have the new universal deluxe edition, however, i cant really see this being the case? it is a collection of all of their second edition books, as far as I know?
