Or, How I missed my chance at being in the OED
When John Sabine, the Director of Social Media for the Merriam-Webster Dictionary reached out on LinkedIn with a question, I knew my hour had arrived. You see, I’ve been hiding from the linguists for awhile.
Two years ago, I received the following message:
Are you aware that a blog post of yours from 2004 is being shared around the internet as evidence that the term “bucket list” existed before the 2007 film The Bucket List? …You can find several posts in r/MandelaEffect debating when this term was coined and your blog post has come up in them.
– Someone on Reddit
At the time, I did what any reasonable person does when they find out they are being discussed on Reddit, and hid under my bed until it went away. Then Mr. Dictionary himself came calling.
In case you are not Extremely Online, Merriam-Webster are famous for their pointed and snarky social media posts. If something large happens in the Internet’s collective awareness, the dictionary account is often there, defining a particularly apt word. Currently, they are researching the origin of the term “Bucket List”.
The Internet’s consensus is, the term feels like it was in use before the movie of the same name, but no one can dig up a solid published reference to prove it. When someone sent Merriam-Webster my post as evidence that the term “Bucket List” had been around since 2004, I had to respond.
Here’s the thing, I am pretty sure the post’s date is accurate. Blog software adds timestamps and files things into directories by creation date. This blog is old as balls, and it certainly could have been a legitimate source. Even better, the Internet Archive had a snapshot of the post from 2004, which seemed promising. But after some careful noodling with the Wayback Machine, I discovered the tragic truth:
I found confirmation in this very blog. In February of 2012, I documented work I did to convert my blog archive to WordPress, and specifically mentioned “titling” as one of the improvements I made.
And thus, in my librarian-ish instinct to enrich the metadata, I unknowingly muddied the historical record. Which is how I lost my chance at being the first written evidence of a English Language phrase, avoided immortality, and inevitably made myself a target of the Time Police.
When did you first hear the term Bucket List?
I’m pretty sure it was knocking around Flint, MI before 2010, but I am clearly not in a position to prove it. If anyone wants to contribute to real live etymology research, this is your chance!