Introduction to Basic Reference Works

1. The OED listed no word that was formed in English using the suffix -aster. English instead borrowed words from Romance languages as Italian - astrolocaster and politicaster - as well as from Latin - grammaticaster, oleaster.

2. a) Should and would had an etymological l that became silent, and so rhymed with shoud and woud. Could began to be spelled similarly due to mechanical imitation, beginning about 1525.

b) Island began to be associated with the similar French words ile, yle in the 15th century and was often spelled ile-land. When ile began to be spelled isle, there was an erroneous analogy that turned iland into isle-land and then into the modern spelling of island, sometime before 1700.

c) The influence of learned Latin changed the English doute to doubt, with a similar change occurring in the French douter, which was abandoned in the 17th century by the French, but retained in the English.

3. Words attested in 1492

4. a) Astroturf is the name for an artificial grass substance, first used in the Houston Astrodome. Its first recorded appearance was in a newspaper article in 1966.

b) Humongous, meaning excessively large, did not have a reference in the OED. But a similar word, hugeous ("huge" from Old French + -ous), first appeared in 1529.

5. noun: verb:

audition (1660)* audition (1935)

plague (1382)* plague (1481)

prod (1787) prod (1535)*

scowl (1500-20) scowl (1340)*

6. The word fowl is listed under its current spelling in the OED, but is listed as foul in the MED. The latter's range of meanings is narrower of necessity, as it is restricted to a shorter time span, but consequently shows more nuances of the word - appearances in phrases and comparisons, in proverbs, in personal names and poetic use. The OED examines variations on fowl as bird and "barn-door fowl", with less emphasis on word combinations and different meanings (fowl as a troublesome sailor). Etymology in the MED is fairly limited, listing only the...