Antedating the OED

From: Dan Clore (clore_at_columbia-center.org)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 03:09:31 -0800

A few items that include citations that antedate the OED's
earliest (italics unfortunately lost in copying. A little
over 260 years seems about as far as I can go--

abracadabra, ?. [?< Abraxas (q.v.); first found in a poem by
Q. Serenus Sammonicus, 2nd century CE.]
[Scot antedates OED by 112 years.]

Otherwise: This word, Abra cadabra written on a paper, with
a certeine figure joined therewith, and hanged about ones
necke, helpeth the ague.
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft

appension, n. A hanging; in particular, a magical pendant
with curative properties.
[Scot antedates OED by 50+ years.]

Argerius Ferrarius, a physician in these daies of great
account, doth saie, that for somuch as by no diet nor
physicke anie disease can be so taken awaie or extinguished,
but that certeine dregs and relikes will remaine: therefore
physicians use physical alligations, appensions, periapts,
amulets, charmes, characters, &c, which he supposeth maie
doo good; but harme he is sure they can doo none: urging
that it is necessarie and expedient for a physician to leave
nothing undone that may be devised for his patients
recoverie; and that by such meanes manie great cures are done.
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft

aura, n.
[Vaughan antedates OED by 220 years.]

The celestial nature differs not in substance from the
aerial spirit but only in degree and complexion; and the
aerial spirit differs from the Aura, or material part of the
Soul, in constitution only and not in nature; so that these
three, being but one substantially, may admit of a perfect,
hypostatical union and be carried by a certain intellectual
light into "the horizon of the supercelestial world" and so
swallowed up of immortality.
Thomas Vaughan, Anima Magica Abscondita; or, A Discourse of
the Universal Spirit of Nature, with His Strange, Abstruse,
Miraculous Ascent and Descent

Bassarid (pl. Bassarides, Bassarids), n. [< L < Gr <
bassára, a fox, probably due to their dress] A Thracian
Bacchanal, a Bacchante.
[Rabelais antedates OED by 260+ years.]

He [viz., Bacchus] had not one Man with him, that look'd
like a Man; his Guards, and all his Forces consisted wholly
of Bassarides, Evantes, Euhyades, Edonides, Trietherides,
Ogygiæ, Mimallonides, Mænades, Thyiades, and Bacchæ;
frantick, raving, raging, furious, mad Women, begirt with
live Snakes and Serpents, instead of Girdles, dischevell'd,
their Hair flowing about their Shoulders, with Garlands of
Vine-branches instead of Forehead-cloaths, clad with Stags
or Goat's Skins, and arm'd with Torches, Javelins, Spears,
and Halberts, whose ends were like Pine-apples; besides they
had certain small light Bucklers, that gave a loud sound if
you touch'd 'em never so little, and these serv'd them
instead of Drums; they were just Seventy nine thousand two
hundred twenty seven.
François Rabelais (trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart & Pierre Le
Motteux), The Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua
and His Son Pantagruel

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
     Fleeter of foot then the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
     The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
     The god pursuing the maiden hid.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon: A Tragedy

Behind, before us sweep
Mænad and Bassarid in spectral rout
With many an unheard shout;
Cithæron looms with every festal steep
Over this hill resolved to dream and doubt.
Clark Ashton Smith, "Bacchante"

black book, n. A book of the black art, magick.
[Webster antedates OED some 230 years.]

FRANCISCO: Free me, my innocence, from treachorous acts!
I know there's thunder yonder; and I'll stand,
Like a safe valley, which low bends the knee
To some aspiring mountain: since I know
Treason, like spiders weaving nets for flies,
By her foul work is found, and in it dies.—
To pass away these thoughts, my honoured lord,
It is reported you posses a book,
Wherein you have quoted, by intelligence,
The names of all notorious offenders
Lurking about the city.
MONTICELLO: Sir, I do;
And some there are which call it my black book.
Well may the title hold; for though it teach not
The art of conjuring, yet in it lurk
The names of many devils.
John Webster, The White Divel; or, The Tragedy of Paulo
Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, with the Life and Death
of Vittoria Corombona the Famous Venetian Courtizan

To whom is the name of Cornelius Agrippa otherwise than
familiar, since a "Magician," of renown not inferior to his
own, has brought him and his terrible "Black Book" again
before the world?—That he was celebrated, among other
exploits, for raising the Devil, we are all aware;—how he
performed this feat,—at least one, and that, perhaps, the
most certain method, by which he did it,—is thus described.
Richard Harris Barham, Intro to "Raising the Devil: A Legend
of Cornelius Agrippa" in The Ingoldsby Legends

Eoan, adj. [< L eous < Gr êôos < êo^'s, dawn] Of or pertaining
to the dawn; eastern.
[First two citations antedate OED's first citation by 200+
years.]

Shall I omit the tunnies that durst meet
Th'Eoan monarch's never daunted fleet,
And beard more bravely his victorious powers
Than the defenders of the Tyrian towers,
Or Porus, conquered on the Indian coast,
Or great Darius that three battles lost?
Josuah Sylvester, Du Bartas his Divine Weeks and Workes

Give her th' Eoan brightnesse,
Wing'd with that subtill lightnesse,
     That doth trans-pierce the Ayre;
The Roses of the Morning
The rising Heav'n adorning,
     To mesh with flames of Hayre.
Michael Drayton, "To the New Yeere"

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
     Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
     Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
             Comes she not, and come ye not,
             Rulers of eternal thought,
To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?
     Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
         Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to Liberty"

Feeling my impetuous soul
Ravish me swifter than Earth's roll
Tow'rds bright day's Eoan goal;
Or if West I chose to run,
Would sweep me thither before the sun,
Raising me on ethereal wing
Lighter than the lark can spring
When drunk with dewlight which the Morn
Pours from her translucent horn
To steep his sweet throat in the corn.
George Darley, Nepenthe

fairily, adv. In the manner of a fairy; in a fairy-like manner.
[Keats antedates OED's first citation by some 50 years.]

     At length burst in the argent revelry,
     With plume, tiara, and all rich array,
     Numerous as shadows haunting fairily
     The brain, new stuff'd, in youth, with triumphs gay
     Of old romance.
John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes"

See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Maud

                         "And shall it be over the seas
With a crew that is neither rude nor rash,
But a bevy of Eroses apple-cheek'd,
In a shallop of crystal ivory-beak'd,
With a satin sail of a ruby glow,
To a sweet little Eden on earth that I know,
A mountain islet pointed and peak'd;
Waves on a diamond shingle dash,
Cataract brooks to the ocean run,
Fairily-delicate palaces shine
Mixt with myrtle and clad with vine,
And overstream'd and silvery-streak'd
With many a rivulet high against the Sun
The facets of the glorious mountain flash
Above the valleys of palm and pine."
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Islet"

fairy circle, n. A fairy ring: a circular band of grass
greener and lusher than the surrounding grass, supposedly
caused by dancing fairies. (In actuality caused by an
underground fungus.)
[Nashe antedates OED by 50+ years.]

His skin riddled and crumpled like a piece of burnt
parchment; and more channels and creases he hath in his face
than there be fairy circles on Salisbury Plain, and wrinkles
and frets of old age than characters on Christ's Sepulchre
in Mount Calvary, on which everyone that comes scrapes his
name and sets his mark to show that he hath been there; [. . .]
Thomas Nashe, Have with You to Saffron Walden

Hesper, pr.n. The planet Venus as the evening star; cf.
Phosphor, Venus as the morning star.
[Spenser antedates OED by 27 years, Donne by 11.]

 From those high Towers, this noble Lord issuing,
Like Radiant Hesper when his golden hayre
In th'Ocean billowes he hath Bathed fayre,
Descended to the Rivers open vewing,
With a great traine ensuing.
Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion; or, A Spousall Verse

Venus retards her not, to'enquire, how shee
Can, (being one starre) Hesper, and Vesper bee;
Hee that charm'd Argus eyes, sweet Mercury,
Workes not on her, who now is growne all eye;
Who, if she meet the body of the Sunne,
Goes through, not staying till his course be runne;
Who findes in Mars his Campe no corps of Guard;
Nor is by Jove, nor by his father barr'd;
But ere she can consider how she went,
At once is at, and through the Firmament.
John Donne, The Second Anniversary: Of the Progress of the Soul

O Hesper-Phosphor, far away
     Shining, the first, last white star,
Hear'st thou the strange, the ghostly cry,
That moan of an ancient agony
 From purple forest to golden sky
     Shivering over the breathless bay?
Alfred Noyes, "At Dawn"

inner space, n.
[Blavatsky antedates OED by 70 years; Purucker by 25 years.]

However it may be, "The Breath of the Father-Mother issues
cold and radiant and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once
more, and be purified in the eternal bosom of inner Space,"
says the Commentary.
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of
Science, Religion, and Philosophy

As I have said above, this is the path that the genuine
Occultist follows, that small, old, still Path of the
ancient Sages which traverses the limitless fields of
boundless SPACE, inner space and outer space, the Space-Time
of Consciousness-Substance.
Gottfried de Purucker, "Occultism and Psychic Phenomena" in
Studies in Occult Philosophy

But now he knows these hills, that is to say he knows them
better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be
I think with other eyes, and not only that but the within,
all that inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and
other caverns where thought and feeling dance their sabbath,
all that too quite differently disposed.
Samuel Beckett, Molloy

Jovian, n. A native or inhabitant of the planet Jupiter.
[Blavatsky antedates OED (in this sense) by 41 years]

And thus, we are taught, men lived down to the close of the
Third Root-Race, when eternal spring reigned over the whole
globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Jupiter;
a "world," says M. Flammarion, "which is not subject like
our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to abrupt
alternations of temperature, but which is enriched with all
the treasures of eternal spring." ("Pluralité des Mondes,"
p. 69.) Those astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a
molten condition, in our sense of the term, are invited to
settle their dispute with this learned French Astronomer. It
must, however, be always borne in mind that the "eternal
spring" referred to is only a condition cognised as such by
the Jovians. It is not "spring" as we know it.
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of
Science, Religion, and Philosophy

monops, n. A one-eyed creature.
[Motteux antedates OED by 160+ years.]

Item. Some Cynamologi, Argatiles, Caprimulgi, Thynnunculs,
Onocrotals, or Bitterns, with their wide Swallows,
Stymphalides, Harpies, Panthers, Dorcas's or Bucks, Cemas's,
Cynocephalis's, Satyrs, Cartasons, Tarands, Uri, Monops's,
or Bonasi, Neades, Stera's, Marmosets, or Monkeys, Bugles,
Musimons, Byturos's, Ophyri, Scriech Owls, Goblins, Fairies,
and Gryphins.
François Rabelais (trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart & Pierre Le
Motteux), The Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua
and His Son Pantagruel
moonquake, n. [< moon + earthquake] An earthquake-like
tremor of the moon's surface.
[CAS antedates OED by 20 years.]
 
 

                                 And I read
Upon the tongue of a forgotten sphinx,
The annulling word a spiteful demon wrote
In gall of slain chimeras; and I know
What pentacles the lunar wizards use,
That once allured the gulf-returning roc,
With ten great wings of furlèd storm, to pause
Midmost an alabaster mount; and there,
With boulder-weighted webs of dragons' gut
Uplift by cranes a captive giant built,
They wound the monstrous, moonquake-throbbing bird,
And plucked from off his saber-taloned feet
Uranian sapphires fast in frozen blood,
And amethysts from Mars.
Clark Ashton Smith, The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of
Evil

Omphalopsychite, n. A practitioner of navel-gazing as a form
of meditation.
[Ludlow antedates OED by 25 years.]

A heavy footstep from within sounded upon the staircase,
breaking up my dream, and the next moment flashed upon the
platform a man who had come to "do" the falls, with the
odors of the metropolis still cleaving to his garments, and
rotund in all the plenitude of corporeal well-being—an
Omphalopsychite by necessity, since he found it impossible
to look down at all without resting his eyes upon that
portion of his individuality tangent to the lower border of
the waistcoat. The utmost that I could ask from this adipose
formation was to keep silence: he did not even do that.
Fitz Hugh Ludlow, The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from
the Life of a Pythagorean

ouroboros, uroboros, uroborus, adj. & n. [< Gr, (drakôn)
ourobóros, "tail-devouring (dragon)"] The symbol, in
circular form, of a dragon or serpent (or "worm") devouring
its own tail.
[Eddison antedates the OED's first citation by 18 years.]

Titles: E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

"Rightfully, having such a timeless life, this King weareth
on his thumb that worm Ouroboros which doctors have from of
old made for an ensample of eternity, whereof the end is
ever at the beginning and the beginning at the end for ever
more."
E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

Your far off laughter
Is an earthquake in your thigh.
Coild like Ourabouros [sic]
     we are the Naga King
This bed is Eternal Chaos
             —and wake in a stream of light.
Gary Snyder, "The Manichæans"

phallicist, n. A student of phallicism.
[Crowley antedates OED by 24 years.]

If you do not accept my conclusion that all religions are
the expression of truth under different aspects, facets of
the same intolerable gem, you are forced back on the
conclusions of those unpleasing persons the Phallicists. But
should you travel to the East, and tell a Lingam-worshipping
Sivite that his is a phallic worship he will not be pleased
with you. Compare on this point Arnold, "India Revisited,"
1886, p. 112.
Aleister Crowley, Tannhäuser: A Story of All Time

Phosphor, pr.n. [< L Phosphorus < Gr Phôsphóros,
light-bringing] Venus as the morning star; Lucifer.
[Fletcher antedates OED's first citation by 25 years.]

So fairest Phosphor the bright Morning starre,
But neewely washt in the greene element,
Before the drouzie Night is halfe aware,
Shooting his flaming locks with deaw besprent,
Springs lively up into the orient,
     And the bright drove, fleec't all in gold, he chaces
     To drinke, that on the Olympique mountaine grazes,
The while the minor Planets forfeit all their faces.
Giles Fletcher, Christs Triumph after Death

Pythia (pl. Pythiæ), pr.n. [< Gr; connected to python,
associated with pýthein, to rot] The title of the priestess
of Apollo at Delphi, who delivered ambiguous oracles in a
highly intoxicated state. Also, another name for Delphi.
[E.K. antedates OED by 260+ years, Browne by nearly 200;
Campbell, Godwin, and Hemans also antedate the OED.]

And being in the middest of all theyr bravery, sodenly
either for wont of matter, or of ryme, or having forgotten
theyr former conceipt, they seeme to be so pained and
traveiled in theyr remembrance, as it were a woman in
childebirth or as that same Pythia, when the traunce came
upon her.
E.K., Epistle to Gabriel Harvey in Edmund Spenser, The
Shepheardes Calender

What juggling there was therein, the Orator plainly
confessed, who being good at the same game himself, could
say that Pythia Philippised.
Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or, Enquiries into
Very Many Received Tenents and Commonly Presumed Truths

     "Turn, Child of Heaven, thy rapture-lightened eye
To Wisdom's walk,—the sacred Nine are nigh:
Hark! from bright spires that gild the Delphian height,
 From streams that wander in eternal light,
Ranged on their hill, Harmonia's daughters swell
The mingling tones of horn, and harp, and shell;
Deep from his vaults the Loxian murmurs flow,
And Pythia's awful organ peals below."
Thomas Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope

On this mountain Apollo was said to have slain the serpent
Python. The apartment of the oracle was immediately over the
chasm from which the vapour issued. A priestess delivered
the responses, who was called Pythia, probably in
commemoration of the exploit which had been performed by
Apollo. She sat upon a tripod, or three-legged stool,
perforated with holes over the seat of the vapours. After a
time, her figure enlarged itself, her hair stood on end, her
complexion and features became altered, her heart panted and
her bosom swelled, and her voice grew more than human. In
this condition she uttered a number of wild and incoherent
phrases, which were supposed to be dictated by the God.
William Godwin, Lives of the Necromancers; or, An Account of
the Most Eminent Persons in Successive Ages Who Have Claimed
for Themselves, or to Whom Has Been Imputed by Others, the
Exercise of Magical Power

     The fires grew pale on Rome's deserted shrines,
     In the dim grot the Pythia's voice had died;
     —Shout, for the city of the Constantines,
     The rising city of the billow-side,
     The City of the Cross!—great ocean's bride,
     Crowned with her birth she sprung! Long ages past,
     And still she looked in glory o'er the tide,
     Which at her feet barbaric riches cast,
Poured by the burning East, all joyously and fast.
Felicia Hemans, "The Last Constantine"

Pythia staggered, feeling o'er her
Her lost god's forsaking look;
Straight her eyeballs filmed with horror,
And her crispy fillets shook,
And her lips gaped, through their foam,
For a word that did not come.
                          Pan, Pan was dead.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Dead Pan"

PYTHIA, or Pythoness.—Webster dismisses the word very
briefly by saying that it was the name of one who delivered
the oracles at the Temple of Delphi, and "any female
supposed to have the spirit of divination in her—a witch,"
which is neither complimentary, exact, nor just. A Pythia,
upon the authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and
others, was a nervous sensitive; she was chosen from among
the poorest class, young and pure. Attached to the temple,
within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every
other, and to which no one but the priest, or seer, had
admittance, she had no communications with the outside
world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of
a Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a
fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating
vapors, these subterranean exhalations penetrating her whole
system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state
she delivered oracles. She was sometimes called ventriloqua
vates, the ventriloquist-prophetess.
H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries
of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology

Their prophetesses are counterparts of the Pythiæ and
Bacchantes.
H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries
of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology

superspace, super-space, n. Space of infinitely many
dimensions, incorporating the known space-time continuum.
[CAS antedates OED by 37 years.]

He, the all-seeing eye, aloof in super-space, was aware of
movement, as if he were drawn back by some subtle thread of
magnetism into the dungeon of time and space from which he
had momentarily departed.
Clark Ashton Smith, "The Plutonian Drug"

trans-Stygian, adj. Of or pertaining to the regions beyond
the river Styx; infernal.
[Reynolds antedates OED by 50+ years.]

The Familiars hurried Isaachar away to the Torture-Chamber,
which, as we before stated, opened from the tribunal. And
terrible, indeed, was the appearance of that earthly
hell—that terrestrial Hades, invented by fiends in human
shape—that den of horrors constituting, indeed, a fitting
foretaste of trans-Stygian torment!
G.W.M. Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf: A Romance

Völva (pl. Völur, Völvas), Volva, n. [ON] In Scandinavian
religion and mythology, a seeress, prophetess, sibyl, witch,
shamaness. The Eiríks Saga Rauða (aka Þorfinns Saga
Karlsefnis) provides a detailed description of a Völva's
costume and performance. She wears catskin gloves and
calfskin boots, and prophesied on a high platform after
eating a sacrificial meal made from the heart of every kind
of animal available. In the Elder Edda, the poem Völuspá (or
soothsaying of the Völva; for spá cf. Eng spae (q.v.)
contains a remarkable visionary account of Scandinavian
mythology from creation to Ragnarök. Cf. Vala.
[Gray antedates OED by 110+ years; Thorpe by 38; Blavatsky
by 12.]

Women were look'd upon, as having a particular insight into
futurity; & some there were, that made profession of magic
arts & of divination: these travel'd round the country, &
were received in every house with great respect and honour.
such a Woman bore the name of Volva, Seidkona, or Spakona.
the dress of Thorbiorga, one of these Prophetesses, is
described at large in Eiriks Rauda Sogu (apud Bartholinum,
L:3.cap.4.p:688) she had on a blew vest spangled all over
with stones, a necklace of glass beads, a cap made of the
skin of a black lamb, lined with white cat-skin; she lent on
a staff adorn'd with brass with a round head set with
stones, & was girt with a Hunlandish belt, at wch hung her
pouch full of magical instruments. her buskins were of rough
calves-skin bound on with thongs adorn'd with knobs of
brass; & her gloves of white cat, the fur turn'd inwards.
&c: they were also call'd Fiolkynga or fiol-kunning i:e:
Multiscia, & Visind-kona, i:e: Oraculorum mulier, Nornir,
i:e: Parcæ.
Thomas Gray, Commonplace Book (note to "The Descent of Odin:
An Ode")

Then came a Vala (Völva) or prophetess, named Groa, the wife
of Örvandil (Örvald), who sang incantations (galldrar) over
him, so that the stone was loosed.
Benjamin Thorpe, Northern Mythology from Pagan Faith to
Local Legends

The most remarkable class of seid-women were the so-called
Valas, or Völvas.
Benjamin Thorpe, Northern Mythology from Pagan Faith to
Local Legends

Odin, the Scandinavian priest and monarch, was thought by
many to have originated the practice of magic some seventy
years B.C. But it was easily demonstrated that the
mysterious rites of the priestesses called Völvas, Valas,
were greatly anterior to his age.
H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries
of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology 

-- 
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedanclorenecro/
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Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"

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