Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
Well, not necessarily. I wouldn't have guessed that manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless are anachronistic in a Regency setting, for instance.
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I wouldn't have either, but were I trying to write for the period it would still have been easy to check before using them. The OED online has detailed etymologies including earliest recorded (or least extant) use, so a careful author doing proper research could test whether they fit. Whereas slang of the period may well have vanished without a written trace, allowing modern authors to make it up with less fear of being caught out.
(fwiw, the OED has the following)
selfless
1651 J. Godolphin Holy Arbor To Rdr. sig. a4v I leave this Memento with all selfless Christians.
1783 J. Knyveton Diary 2 Apr. in E. Gray Man Midwife (1946) 95 A selfless calling.
1825 S. T. Coleridge Aids Refl. 112 Holy Instincts of Maternal Love, detached and in selfless purity.
manipulate
†a. intransitive. Chemistry. To handle apparatus, etc., in experiments; cf. manipulation n. 2. Obsolete. rare.
1827 M. Faraday Chem. Manip. Introd. p. iv Of two persons having otherwise equal talents..the one who manipulates best will very soon be in advance of the other.
b. transitive. gen. To handle, esp. with skill or dexterity; to turn, reposition, reshape, etc., manually or by means of a tool or machine.
1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus iii. x, in Fraser's Mag. Aug. 187/2 Or else, shut up in private Oratories, [they] meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her [sc. the earth].