"Polyamory" enters the Oxford English Dictionary

On September 14, 2006, after at least seven years of consideration, the Oxford English Dictionary finally added the word polyamory (and -ous and -ist) to its canon of the English language. It did so via its ongoing revision and supplement series.

This makes the word as officially a part of the English language as a word can be. By coincidence, this entry followed just two months after the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary adopted the word with some public fanfare.

Here is the OED entry:

polyamory, n.

orig. U.S.

Forms: 19- polyamory, 19- polyamoury. [< POLY- comb. form + classical Latin amor (see AMOUR n.1) + -Y suffix3, after POLYAMOROUS adj.
In form polyamoury prob. after French amour AMOUR n.1]

The fact of having simultaneous close emotional relationships with two or more other individuals, viewed as an alternative to monogamy, esp. in regard to matters of sexual fidelity; the custom or practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of all partners concerned.

Etymology: [1992 J[ennifer] L. WESP Proposal for alt.poly-amory in alt.config (Usenet newsgroup) 21 May, I propose to form the group alt.poly-amory. It would be a place for people who have multiple lovers to talk about the various problems unique to us.] 1992 Re: Reasons not to be Monogamous in soc.singles (Usenet newsgroup) 28 May, Serial monogamy is often more risky than long term polyamory. 1998 Guardian 21 July II. 2/3 The burgeoning polyamoury community in the US — with its offshoot organisation in Britain — is supporting and promoting all kinds of polygamous relationships. 2005 Seattle Weekly (Nexis) 2 Mar. 75 [He] began preaching meditation, polyamory, and disco dancing as ways of unmooring oneself from earthly ties.

There is no reference in the etymology to Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart (born Diana Moore), whose seminal essay "A Bouquet of Lovers" two years earlier (in the spring 1990 issue of the neo-pagan magazine Green Egg) is often credited with launching the word. The OED in fact wrote to Morning Glory in 1999 asking for her definition of the word, and, by her account, she replied:

The practice, state or ability of having more than one sexual loving relationship at the same time, with the full knowledge and consent of all partners involved.

Notice that the OED indeed adopted the key parts of Morning Glory's phrasing in its definition. However, the word polyamory never actually appears in "A Bouquet of Lovers", only the adjective polyamorous (which appears seven times). The compilers of the OED are nothing if not literalists (literally!), which I guess is why they left her out.

The informative Wikipedia entry for polyamory does, however, claim, "There are no verifiable sources showing the word polyamory in common use until after alt.polyamory was created" (by Wesp in 1992).

I have not turned up a single use of polyamory, -ous, or -ist before 1990, despite pursuing anecdotal claims that it appeared as early as the 1960s. (I suspect that people are misremembering uses of "polyfidelity," which was coined by "Even Eve" Furchgott in the Kerista commune in the 1970s).

See also Joshua Bardwell's interesting history and analysis of "Bouquet".

Update January 19: Jennifer Wesp herself is thrilled to discover that she has just been immortalized in the OED. I asked her to describe how she came up with the word, and she writes:

Alan, you asked how I came into the word polyamory. The answer is that I invented it from the blue. I was having a flame war on alt.sex with Mikhail Zelany about the morality of having non-monogamous relationships, and (a) got tired of typing non-monogamy and (b) it wasn't a good piece of rhetoric to use a negative, hyphenated word to make a positive point.

So one night either in the Biophysics lab I worked in or the Astronomy computer lab where my lover Greg Lindahl worked, in the middle of composing a flame, I decided to make a new word.

After a couple months I got tired of the flame war and sort of liked the community that was developing around it, so I started the news group. Greg and I politicked a bit to get it widely picked up by sites we thought would find a following. I guess it worked. :-)

Although it's been decidedly inconvenient to be "That Jennifer" at parties, and I've changed my name in part to keep my coworkers and my sons' friends from googling me, as 15 minutes of fame goes, I'm pretty pleased with mine!

Added later: Here is one account of the gestation of the word and its predecessors, by Morning Glory's husband Oberon Zell-Ravenheart. And here is an audio interview of Oberon describing how he and Morning Glory came up with the word, and some of their other involvements in early poly history (this is the Polyamory Weekly podcast, Episode #168).

Added May 25, 2008: Longtime poly activist Cos has this to say:

The OED aren't just being "literalists". Note two other things about "A Bouquet of Lovers", the Green Egg article that has a reputation as being the source of the word polyamory:

1. "polyamorous", which does appear in the article, was introduced with a hyphen ("poly-amorous") in the original article. Later, online versions have mostly had the hyphen removed, but it shows that when they wrote it, they weren't yet comfortable with it as a "word".

2. Everywhere that the "polyamory" form could have appeared in that article, it instead says "polygamy". Clearly, if they'd had the word "polyamory" they'd have used it instead, so this is pretty clear evidence that they didn't have the word at the time.

Cos also comments,

...I remember being excited when I first saw [the word polyamory] appear in a mainstream newspaper in 1995, and for a few years I'd carefully watch for any new occurrences, but sometime around... 1999? I think, it became so common that I stopped.

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