German scholars in particular are constantly deriving much pleasure from winning an informal lexicographic contest that aims at antedating OED quotations: at the last count the Germans alone had found 35,000 instances in which the OED quotation was not the first; others, less stridently, chalk up their own small triumphs of lexical sleuthing, all of which Oxford’s editors accept with disdainful equanimity, professing neither infallibility nor monopoly.)
Good for the Germans then. Too bad no (almost) nobody outside of that country is speaking it with any real enthusiasm.
