826-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Fender Ken Thornton commented, “Fender’s non-inclusion in slang dictionaries raises yet again the question of when does a comparison become widespread enough to attain the usage threshold required for lexicographers? I can imagine many once-popular terms have slipped through the word gratings of doom.”

Jonathon Green, of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, commented. “I would suggest that slang lexicographers missed it because one very rarely looks far beyond the gutter in one’s researches. The middle classes largely fail on slang creation, as do their social superiors, though J Redding Ware, in Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909), who does offer examples labelled society, might have been expected to have picked it up.”

The term is not as obsolete as I had presumed. Dennis Glanzman told me James Sherwood used it in his blog The London Cut Diary about the US presidential visit to London in May 2011: “I also thought the Duchess of Cornwall looked terribly grand in her diamond fender.”

“Just a brief note,” added Erik Kowal, “to applaud your exemplary exegesis of this term in this week’s newsletter. It’s the kind of detective work that demonstrates that, while not glamorous in the conventional sense, in its own way etymology can be an exciting and even thrilling enterprise. Anyway, thanks for the ringside seat!”