The Language of
the Movies

This paragraph was first seen on the pages of the March, 1916, issue of Motion Picture Magazine reporting that the overwhelming popularity of the new entertainment medium, and the public’s curiosity with the manner in which they are produced, have an impact on the everyday language of the English-speaking world:

“When a thing takes hold of a whole people its idiom enters the language; its individual verbiage begins to limber-up the common speech.”

“So the idiom of active photography has entered the English language, at least wherever the English language is Americanized. The self-conscious valedictorian is told not ‘to look into the camera’. The reporter writing of a street murder terms his description of the underlying cause a ‘cut-back’.”

– and most interestingly, one of the most popular elements of Hollywood verbiage is mentioned as having been noticed by the lexicographers: “close-up”.

The N.Y. TIMES reported that the verb “to film” was entered into the dictionary
in 1914.