It is a curious misapprehension of many otherwise intelligent and well-informed people to think that a writer who is the earliest to be quoted in the dictionary as having used a word actually invented it.
The lofty Oxonian Geoffrey Madan (1895-1947), who as the son of Bodley’s librarian should have known better, left in his Notebooks a list of words under the names of the people who ‘invented them’ (if the published transcript may be relied on).
So he attributes insecurity to the invention of Sir Thomas Browne.
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