Wikidata:Property proposal/First attestation

First known attestation

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Lexemes

   Done: first attested from (P6684) (Talk and documentation)

Description	To indicate the first know usage of a word, may or may not be the actual coinage.
Data type	Item
Domain	Lexeme
Allowed values	members of subclasses of intellectual work (Q15621286)?
Example 1	cromulent (L40594) → Lisa the Iconoclast (Q2982249)
Example 2	electricity (L10918) → Pseudodoxia Epidemica (Q6037862)
Example 3	quark (L2898) (scientific sense only) → A schematic model of baryons and mesons (Q54006342)
See also	named by (P3938), inception (P571), derived from lexeme (P5191), time of earliest written record (P1249)

Motivation

Basically what it says in the description. Etymology is covered by derived from lexeme (P5191), but the dating of coinages is not covered by any property. inception (P571) doesn't really work, and significant event (P793) even less so. And even if we tried, we don't have an item for "word coinage" that could be used with it anyway. Circeus (talk) 15:39, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support though (as in your last example) should this be only a property of senses, or does it also make sense for lexemes as a whole (presumably the earliest sense attestation is the appropriate one for the lexeme too)? ArthurPSmith (talk) 19:39, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Sometimes it's a sense thing, sometimes it's a word-level. In the case of quark, it's being borrowed from Finegans Wake, but in that work, it's clearly referring to quark (Q259642), the dairy product (which was possibly found in earlier sources, but I don't have access to the OED to confirm). Electricity and Cromulent, though, seem to have clear places of first use (another example in that category would be "grok", from Stranger in a Strange Land (Q929821) and thoughtcrime from Nineteen Eighty-Four (Q208460)) Circeus (talk) 15:32, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
•  Comment @Circeus, ArthurPSmith: I was about to create this, but it seems that possible overlap with time of earliest written record (P1249) should be addressed (even if that property seems more suitable for items about places whatever its current actual name). --- Jura 17:33, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • The property I'm proposing has datatime item, not time. That's a pretty big difference. I can see there's some semantic overlap, but personally I see no issue with having both properties around, because it allows for two very different types of searches. With time of earliest written record (P1249), the work is at best relegated to a source, if mentioned at all. For example, it's going to be a LOT harder to search for (say) words or sense with first attestation in Shakespeare if the only available property is time of earliest written record (P1249). Additionally, I'm not clear how time of earliest written record (P1249)'s single-value constraint (Q19474404) interacts with being present on separate senses of a lexeme.
    Mind you, with time of earliest written record (P1249)in mind, the property should be created as something like "first work to use word or sense" to reduce confusion. Circeus (talk) 20:43, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
• @Circeus:  Done please make good use of it. --- Jura 08:54, 13 April 2019 (UTC)