Finding the first time a word was ever used: seems pretty simple, right? All you have to do is read everything ever written, and then write down where you first saw it. And then hope that it wasn't used for years in speech before ever being written down (it pretty much always was). Then you get to do the same for every other word. Like we said, easy.

Today we're getting into the inexact, exacting science of finding a word's earliest use.

Hosted by Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.

Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.

Transcript available here.

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