[tz] [External] Re: OpenJDK/CLDR/ICU/Joda issues with Ireland change

John Hawkinson jhawk at MIT.EDU
Sun Jan 28 22:49:51 UTC 2018


Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote on Sun, 28 Jan 2018
at 14:15:11 -0800 in <0B1729A4-454C-43A6-BC7F-9B99C0677122 at alum.mit.edu>:

> And the online OED says (this is the US flavor of the OED, although they claim

No. Oxford University Press publishes many dictionaries. THe OED is one of many, and you have not cited it. ("oxforddictionaries.com" is confusing. It is apparently an amalgam of the Oxford Dictionary of English, New Oxford American Dictionary, and Oxford Thesaurus of English; see https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/help). These other dictionaries lack the persuasive power and stature of the OED.

But be forewarned -- trying to use the OED to win an argument is generally a bad approach. If anyone ever used a word in a particular way (and chances are they have), you an often find support for it in the OED. That says very little about the legitimacy of such a usage. Citing the OED is a good way to fool people into thinking that some particular usage is more canon than it really is. Also, the OED is a good dictionary for usage prior to the current pair of decades. But if you want modern or recent usage, there are many better choices (I personally prefer the American Heritage).


With that pedantry out of the way, it turns out the OED's definition of "daylight saving" (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/401483?rskey=aH523Y&result=1#eid, subscription required) exactly matches oxforddictionaries.com (this sometimes happens).

Not true for daylight saving time (compound C2), where it is:

  "daylight saving time  n. (also daylight savings time) time as adjusted during the summer to achieve longer evening daylight, by setting the clocks ahead of standard time, typically by one hour; the period during which this is in force; cf. summertime n. 2."



The OED, as its forte, also has six quotations for daylight saving from 1908-2004, and four for daylight saving time from 1908-2009. One hyphenates daylight-saving and another capitalizes Daylight Saving Time.

There is also compound C1, for "daylight saving" generally, as used in "daylight saving bill" and "daylight saving legislation" with another four quotations.


In any case, I don't think these are particularly good sources for this kind of question.

p.s.: the Adelaide 1908 quotation is:

1908   Register (Adelaide) 27 June 11/6 (heading)    Daylight saving seriously discussed.

--jhawk at mit.edu
  John Hawkinson


> the first use was in Adelaide, which I'm guessing is the Adelaide in Australia):
> 
> 	https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/daylight_saving
> 
> "A method of securing longer evening daylight during the summer by setting the clocks ahead of standard time, typically by one hour; the period during which this is in force."
> 
> and
> 
> 	https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/daylight_saving_time
> 
> "Time as adjusted to achieve longer evening daylight in summer by setting the clocks an hour ahead of the standard time." (That is explicitly noted as a North American usage; perhaps the Australians were the first to refer to "daylight saving", and the Yanks were the first to refer to the time when "daylight saving" was being done as "daylight saving{s} time").


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