[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But why in the world would an author/editor/proofreader even THINK of checking everyday words like manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless? It's not like a writer is attempting to forge an Austen manuscript that must pass muster, and is worried about being tripped up by a wily detective who just happens to be an etymologist.

What else would possibly trigger anyone else to look up every darn word? Certainly the concepts existed. It's not the same as checking to see if something or other had been invented or in use by a certain date.

The point of that post of mine was not to say that writers SHOULD check, but to defend an earlier statement of mine that they COULD.
I had said

It might be very difficult to know which words writers of the time DID use, but it's very easy to know which ones they did NOT.

to which the reply was

Well, not necessarily. I wouldn't have guessed that manipulate, flawlessly, or selfless are anachronistic in a Regency setting, for instance.

So I replied by showing that a means of checking existed. I was not saying that such checks should be done.

It was an unexpected bonus that doing a "demonstration" test of that checking mechanism on the three words cited as anachronisms proved that one (selfless) was emphatically not an an anachronism in the Regency period, and one (manipulate) was defensible, with a written citation from 1827, considered part of the Regency period generally. For the third, given that the adjective "flawless" was well established in English centuries before the Regency, asserting that its adverbial derivative "flawlessly" was anachronistic would also seem debatable, despite there being no extant citation of its use in writing before the last quarter of C19.

Again, though, my point was simply to defend my earlier post. Although I had said I don't like anachronisms in period writing. I had in mind uncontestable anachronisms, like "proactive" (1930s) or "prioritize" (1950s) for example, rather than words whose use does not give a glaringly "modern" feel to the writing.
As I said in my post above

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.(e.a.)

It was the contrast between the verifiability of standard and slang that I was defending, I was not suggesting authors check every word in the OED before using it