Thanks for the many replies to my question. The following is a summary of
the responses to my inquiry about the noun "sustainability." My question
was:
DOES ANYONE KNOW IN WHAT YEAR THIS WORD FIRST APPEARED IN A DICTIONARY?
The first might be: 1987 Unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English
Language
========== Direct Replies to Question =================
(1) This will depend on the publisher, of course. So here are a couple of
cutoffs. It's not in Random House Collegiate 1984 or Webster's Unabridged 1983.
(2) First is hard to determine, but the American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, 3rd edition, 1992 seems to list it as a noun variant of
sustain. I am using an electronic version from Microsoft.
(3) My New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines sustainability as the
quality of being sustainable, and dates the first use as L20 -- late 20th
century, defined as 1970 or later.
(4) sustainability is not in the 1990 OED and sustainable is not in my 1968
edition.
(5) The 1994 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th):
This dictionary lists sustainability as the noun form of sustainable (no
mention of when the noun was introduced). This version does not list the
word sustainment.
I note that it lists: Sustainable adj. (ca 1727)
Sustained-yield n. (ca 1905)
================ Other Comments ========================
(6) I am working on a similar topic in German forest
literature. There the substantive form 'Nachhaltigkeit' occurred around
1800, but the adverbial form 'nachhaltig' - like 'sustained' or
'sustainable' was used much earlier together with forestry. The first
known source is dated to the year 1713.
(7) In the aftermath of Rio the word sustainability is really in. In German
it's called "Nachhaltigkeit". However, if you look up "Nachhaltigkeit" in a
dictionary you get "sustainment" as the corresponding English word.
[note from D.South: TREECD has 572 references to "sustainability" but just 1
reference to "sustainment," and it was in German ]
(8) A translation of sustainability would be "Nachhaltigkeit" and this was
used as at least as early as 1841 (Heyer, C, 1841. "Die
Waldertragsregelung"). However, at that stage it was used in relation to
sustained yield -
(9)Sustainability is a neo-logism the English language is good at creating
to keep up with all these other terms.
(10) Can't help you, but its existence is IMPLIED by the word
"sustainable"--the "-ity" ending is as available as the unfortunate
"-ize" that leads to such abominations as "concretize" and "finalize".
(11) There are people at publishing companies who regularly monitor
English usage on broadcast media and written media and keep little card
files on new words, new pronunciations, etc., and they make informed but
arbitrary decisions on when a new word, a new pronunciation, etc. merits
inclusion (I heard an interesting interview with one of these individuals
on NPR lately). So it is a very individualized process for each publishing
company.
(12) I don't know what year the word sustainability first appeared in a
dictionary,
but it would be interesting to search the NEXIS database using the word
"sustainability"
(13) I checked with my computer which tried to break it
into 2 words "sustain" and "ability". In searching a thesaurus for
similar verbs for sustain I come up with nourish, support, endure,
confirm.
(14 ) The following is from an FAO report:
The world's foresters must have welcomed the 1987 report by the
Brundtland Commission, which urged sustainable development, as a long-
awaited recognition of their core principle. It is in the context of
forestry, after all, that the basic elements of sustained resource
management originated many centuries ago. The Chinese grappled with
questions of long-term sustainable timber supplies in the fourth
century b.c. In India and Sri Lanka, rulers began establishing forest
reserves, controlling cutting and regulating hunting more than 2 000
years ago.
David South
School of Forestry
Auburn University, AL 36849-5418
dsouth@forestry.auburn.edu
334-844-1022
334-844-1084 (FAX)
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