muuranker: (Default)
muuranker ([personal profile] muuranker) wrote2007-05-15 10:04 pm
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Mundanes and Normals

A couple of nights ago on Balderdash and Piffle (http://www.oed.com/bbcwords/) , some survivors of the mental health service were arguing that a new definition of 'normal' should be included in the OED.  It was rejected, but I thought it should have been accepted, because they were describing a new usage, which paralleled the recent use of 'mundane'.

Looking up 'mundane', I find the OED has the earliest entry as
1959 R. ENEY Fancyclopedia II 48 - but here 'mundane' means 'a mundane work of fiction', rather than 'a mundane person'.

The earliest for 'mundane [person]' they have is 1986.   Can we do better?  Scour those early 1980s ReadMes for references!


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