IS IT AN ERROR?
Sir,-Something more than the bare assertion by L. D. Austin (in your issue of April 18) is required, if it is to be shown that John Doe is wrong in using "birthday" in its sense of "the anniversary or annual observance of the day of birth of any one." The O.E.D. gives this as one definition of the meaning of the word; and I rely on this as authority for my own assertion that it is Mr. Austin who is wrong in implying that a man’s first birthday can be only the day on which he is born, But I will go further, and say that in educated usage the preserce of the ordinal " first" indicates clearly that the word is used in its meaning of "anniversary day" and none other; for since a man can be born once only, what need is there to say anything more than " birthday," if the word is intended to convey the idea of ‘day of birth"? It is significant that the latest quotation in the O.E.D. of the word in this sense dates as far. back as 1858. On the other hand, innumerable examples of the use of the expression "twenty-first birthday," to describe the day on which aman attains his majority, are to be found in the
best writers of the past and the present.-
RICHARD
ROE
(Wadestown).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19410502.2.8.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 97, 2 May 1941, Page 4
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230IS IT AN ERROR? New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 97, 2 May 1941, Page 4
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