Full record for spacer n.
| Definition | =spaceman |
| OED requirements | antedating 1940 |
| Comment | Imran Ghory submitted a cite from a reprint of Isaac Asimov's "Foundation"; Mike Christie verified the cite in the 1944 first magazine publication. Katrina Campbell submitted a cite from a 1973 reprint of Isaac Asimov's "The Callistan Menace", which Alistair Durie verified in the first publication (Astonishing Stories, April 1940)
Earliest cite in the OED: 1955. |
| Last modified | 6 July, 2008 |
Citations for spacer n.
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| 1941 ‘S. D. Gottesman’ Dead Center in Stirring Science Stories Feb. 20/1 | About them rose the gigantic ribs of the super-spacer that Angel Maclure had undertaken to build. |
| 1944 I. Asimov in Astounding Sci. Fiction Aug. 9/1 | My grandfather was a blood-poor son-of-a-spacer who died heaving coal at starving wages before the Foundation. |
| 1951 F. Brown Something Green in S. Moskowitz Exploring Other Worlds (1969) 142 | A tiny black speck high in the violet. Moving. A spacer. It had to be a spacer. There were no birds on Kruger III. And birds didn't trail jets of fire behind them— |
| 1960 R. A. Heinlein All You Zombies— in E. S. Rabkin Sci. Fiction: Historical Anthol. (1983) 405 | Same way today. A.N.G.E.L.S. marry spacers. |
| 1981 C. J. Cherryh Pride of Chanur (1991) vii. 105 | The papers came back, plasticized and permanent with Tully's face staring back from them, species handwritten, classification general spacer, sex male. |
| 1986 D. Brin & G. Benford Heart of Comet 90 | Probably too late for me, though. I'll have to go live on Earth to have my babies, and no male spacer will give up the Black to stay dirtside with me. |
| 1987 D. Brin Uplift War 306 | Sam Tenance was a starship pilot who stopped at Garth every five years or so, one of Megan's three spacer husbands. |
| 1988 C. J. Cherryh Cyteen 4 | Emigration of scientists and engineers from Sol System was feeding the spacer cultures with the best and brightest and robbing Earth of its best talent. |
| 1990 J. Tiptree, Jr. Color of Neanderthal Eyes 34 | ‘And I think that will end the infection’, I tell him, putting away the universal antibiotic the spacers give us. |
| 1992 P. David Imzadi iv. 28 | You can take the man out of space, but you can't take the spacer out of the man, eh? |
| 1992 L. A. Graf Ice Trap i.7 | Better than a dozen people dressed in generic spacers' civvies were in attendance. |
| 1992 V. Vinge Fire upon Deep i. xv. 113 | You really were a Slow Zone spacer—probably two or three spacers, since none of the corpses were complete. |
| 1993 A. C. Clarke Hammer of God 13 | Above all, it was good to be so close to the ocean, for which all spacers had a deep-seated empathy. |
| 2001 Locus June 35/3 | An entertaining old-fashioned adventure full of familiar elements (obsessed scientists, jealous academics, over-eager military, independent spacers). |
| 2006 Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest Summer 32 | The earliest scans were on the spacer Chickmanga bound for a station in Jupiter orbit. |
| 2006 Analog June 105/2 | Helmut could have been in any of a dozen spacer dives in Valhalla City, any of hundreds around the solar system. |
| 2008 Asimov's Sci. Fiction Apr.–May 166 | To get in, you need one of two special chips. The first is hand-held‥.The second is built into your ID. You get that one if you're a legitimate spacer, operating or working for a business that requires a pilot's license. |
| 2008 Asimov's Sci. Fiction Apr.–May 166 | The old spacer's bar on Longbow Station is the only bar there that doesn't have a name. |
| 2009 Fantasy & Sci. Fiction Apr.–May 220 | Slowly, he tilted his head in a spacer's negative. |