Dictionary makers are searching for the origins of the word 'email'

It is one of those words that defines personal communication in our time, much as handwritten missives chronicled another era. Hence, it is quite inexplicable how even the redoubtable Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which has been doggedly tracking words in this language since 1857, has been unable to pinpoint when and how electronic mail morphed into ‘email’. After all, the ease with which this telescoped word was adopted is what probably triggered the attachment of the prefix ‘e’ to other common modern words, from e-commerce, e-banking and e-tailing to e-books and e-tickets and e-visa. If the first use of the full form has been traced to 1975 and then the earliest written reference to email comes only in 1979, this definitely represents an inordinately long gap. Impatient web users are hardly likely to have persisted with an expanded version for four years.

Of course, it must be remembered that the first written proof of the existence of a word does not necessarily establish its true vintage as it could have been used verbally for a while prior to being immortalised in type. And the OED’s move to crowd-source information on this word signals that it knows the limits of the usual archives — including e-archives — and it wants to tap all sources. No doubt emails will be a prime mode of information exchange on this.