Mark
Do you not agree that my 1907 printing of Websters would be more authoritative as to contemporaneous usage than today's OED?
PS--My 2,300+ page Webster's has only 5 alternative definitions for "lay out" one of which is:
"To prepare for burial"
Maybe we should "lay out" all these Merion threads and get back to the discussion of golf course architecture.......
Rich
No. Two reasons:
1. Dictionary entries are based on varying standards. Definitions in your Webster's reflect mainstream word usages not necessarily of 1907, but perhaps word usages that began at least X years prior. Furthermore, didn't the usage in question date to 1916? Not saying it happened this way, but the Moriarty use of "lay out" might have come into currency after, say, 1902 and your dictionary wouldn't reflect that. But who knows? Maybe your edition is as loose with words as the atrocious
3rd of Webster's.
2. And point #1 is a canard anyway. OED includes word etymologies. It contains multiple passages for each word usage. So OED's 500 or so definitions for "lay," which includes 13 or so for "lay out," includes the first known usage of each.
Some could argue the OED's relative stringency. Certainly the 2nd ed, which is what I have.
A far more useful approach I think is to comb through newspapers of the time seeking the usage of the term in a golf context.
At the end of the day, a term like "lay out," in the critical usage put forth in Moriarty's opinion piece, will not lend itself to a clean definition. It could mean what both sides of this argument claim. It doesn't necessarily mean one or the other, from my reading. All I'm saying is that Moriarty's claim is supported by the contemporaneous use of the term.
David, that reference you cite does support your claim.
I wouldn't have thought of your interpretation of the usage in the cited passage before you brought it up, but now that you have, all I'm saying is you're not necessarily wrong. You could be right.
By the way, I haven't read these threads really at all so I don't know if this has been covered, and I don't have your passage in front of my, but one definition of "lay out" -- working off memory here, sorry -- I recall is something like, "apportion land for a purpose." So another usage could involve, somehow, getting the right property dimensions.
Rich, one last point: if an etymological-semantic discussion doesn't kill this discussion, I have in mind the world's worst cocktail party, with no television in the next room...
Mark