Though in 1946 РІР‚ВSkilsawРІР‚в„ў as a company and brand had been around for a couple of decades, it was only in 1937 that its iconic model 77 РІР‚ВSkilsawРІР‚в„ў worm-drive circular saw appeared on the market. The 'Black and Decker skill saw' listed in our 1946 ad clearly does exactly that. In dictionaries of modern language the issue is further complicated by the legal ramifications of trademarks and trade names, since companies do not in general like to see their expensively promoted brands converted by popular usage into generic terms. Names work differently in many respects from other words and their presence in dictionaries is always a little uncomfortable. personal and place names), and with regard to things denoted in some way by a name.

Finally, whether to include either Disston or its byform Dixson in one's dictionary depends on one's policy with regard to names (e.g. When a word is unfamiliar - and a lot about the Middle English period must always remain unfamiliar -, we are tempted, or even compelled, to posit a new word, demanding a new entry in the dictionary, failing to recognize an old word in its novel guise. If that can happen to a documenter of contemporary English, it is a much more frequent pitfall of the historical lexicographer. A modern lexicographer who does not know saws, or who is misled by appearances, might be tempted to create a whole new ghost word, or rather ghost brand 'Dixon', a non-existent mid-century maker of woodworkersРІР‚в„ў panel saws. Is it a simple unforced error, perhaps animated by analogy or mistaken for a more common word? Is it a scribal error, caused by similarity of sound or shape or by simple inadvertance? Is it a revelatory error, exposing changes in the spoken language which standardized spelling concealed: when a scribe spelled a word differently than was standard, does that difference perhaps represent a real change, or real variation, in the way the word was said? And of course, all of this presumes that the lexicographer recognizes an underlying identity between 'Dixson' and 'Disston'. My guess in this case is that the first explanation is the correct one, but all three are possible, and all three kinds of explanation are options for the historical lexicographer too, faced with a mysterious form in a 15th-century manuscript. perhaps 'Disston' had actually come to be pronounced 'Dixon' and the spelling we see is a clue to that development. Perhaps the /st/ of Disston had metathesized in at least this speaker's language to /ts/ and thence to the more common /ks/. Sibilant clusters are particularly subject to metathesis in English. Or perhaps the error reveals an underlying shift of pronunciation. Or it could be an error of transmission - a scribal error if you will - perhaps the ad was transcribed incorrectly perhaps it was even phoned in and what we see is what the clerk at the Detroit News heard. 'Dixson' is a mistake, but what kind of mistake? It could be orthographic, the seller (not too sure of his spelling) allowing the more common 'Dixon' (or 'Dickson') to influence his spelling of the less common 'Disston'. At first glance it has a minor spelling abnormality: 'Dixson' instead of 'Dixon' or 'Dickson.' But for anyone who knows saws, these sale items belong neither to Dixon nor to Dickson but are almost certainly saws made by Disston, the most famous of American saw makers. In particular, look at these three items: In fact, this post will seem a little roundabout, but trust me, it will eventually end up at the work actually being carried out, and at the sort of thinking, and the sort of crazy people, that go into it.Р”В¬onsider, if you will, this classified ad from a local newspaper, dating from an era when there were such things as newspapers and classified ads ( Detroit News, November 28, 1946): This post will not address the now 90-year history of the project, nor the technical or design aspects of our new interface, nor even the problems attached to sustaining a project like this over nearly a century. For the past three years the Text Creation Unit, a small group within the Digital Content & Collections department of LIT, has been busy revising one of the University's oldest and most famous products and projects, the Middle English Dictionary.

Dating skilsaw model 77