Monday, May 09, 2022
Disinformation
J. Michael Waller, "The Biden Administration’s 'Disinformation' Board Is A Tool Straight From Soviet Russia's KGB," The Federalist (May 9, 2022):
If you search for "disinformation" in Google Books with a custom date range (e.g. 1500-1900, or 1900-1950), you will get dozens of hits. But a spot check of these Google Books hits indicates that they are all bogus. I could not verify a single genuine example within those date ranges. By the way, I wish Google Books would bring back its "Sort by Date" feature.
Update: To Wikipedia, s.v. Disinformation, I owe this example from a Kansas newspaper, the Medicine Lodge Cresset (February 17, 1887), p. 3:
Thanks to Mike Zim for drawing my attention to a yet earlier example, from
The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi, March 25, 1875), p. 4:
Related post: First Occurrence.
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"Disinformation" is not a word from the English language. It is a direct translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya.The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) seems to support Waller's claim (mismatched parentheses in online original):
perhaps < Russian dezinformacija (1949, in S. I. Ožegov Slovar' russkogo jazyka, allegedly < French, although French désinformation is not recorded until 1954 (Quemada, Matériaux (1971) II. 53)The earliest English example cited in the OED is dated 1955.
If you search for "disinformation" in Google Books with a custom date range (e.g. 1500-1900, or 1900-1950), you will get dozens of hits. But a spot check of these Google Books hits indicates that they are all bogus. I could not verify a single genuine example within those date ranges. By the way, I wish Google Books would bring back its "Sort by Date" feature.
Update: To Wikipedia, s.v. Disinformation, I owe this example from a Kansas newspaper, the Medicine Lodge Cresset (February 17, 1887), p. 3:
