Researching Vocabulary

I mainly write historical fiction, and I'm keenly aware of how important it is not to use vocabulary that's too modern in a historical novel. Of course, the farther back in history a novel is set, the more restricted the vocabulary. When I wrote When Winter Is Past, set in 1739, I felt as if I were looking up almost every word. But it's important to me to put out the best book I can, and I enjoy making them accurate. 

Too many writers don't do this. I've caught mistakes time and time again as I read. A well-known author once had a ceiling fan in a bank in a book set in 1846 in the Old West. No explanation was given as to what powered the fan. The book I just finished reading was set in Oklahoma in 1900. It used the word "do" for "hairdo." "Hairdo" didn't come into the vocabulary until 1932, and "do" would have been much later. It also used "positive reinforcement," which was first used around 1938, and "poo poo cushion," which wasn't invented until the 1920's.

It's easy to research a term. I use two main sources: Merriam-Wesbster online dictionary, which gives the date a word was first used and English Through the Ages by William Brohaugh, which was written for this purpose with authors in mind. The problem comes when the sources disagree, which isn't often. However, Brohaugh gives the date for the word "orphanage" as 1875, while Merriam-Webster gives it as 1580. Now that's a huge discrepancy!

Another interesting story occurred at a writers' workshop I attended a couple of months ago. The presenter tried to tell me the word "gold" only dated back to the Renaissance period. "But 'gold' is used in the Bible," I added, "so it has to be older than that." 
"Oh, but that was in Hebrew or Greek," she countered. "We're using English."
Using that logic, I couldn't write a novel in English set in biblical times or anywhere else that the English language isn't spoken. I'm still scratching my head over that one.

The fact is, however, that if an author is going to write historical fiction, he or she needs to be as historically accurate as possible. That includes not using vocabulary that came after that time period, and it's easy to check this. It's one more facet to important research.

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