documentaryadj.n.

1827 J. Bentham Rationale Judicial Evid. I. i. iv. 54 Documentary evidence.

1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus ii. iii. 42/1 Various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps.

1855 T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. IV. 178 They were in possession of documentary evidence which would confound the guilty.

1861 M. Pattison in Westm. Rev. Apr. 403 Goes back beyond the printed annalists to original and documentary authorities.

1843 T. Carlyle Past & Present i. iii. 25 It is an authentic..fact,..quietly documentary of a whole world of such.

1873 J. Earle Philol. Eng. Tongue (ed. 2) Introd. 55 Long before 1250 we get traces of the documentary use of French..Trevisa says it was a new thing in 1385 for children to construe into English in the grammar schools.

1926 N.Y. Sun 8 Feb. 18/1 ‘Moana’, being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family, has documentary value.

1930 P. Rotha Film till Now i. ii. 65 The Documentary or Interest Film, including the Scientific, Cultural and Sociological Film.

1932 Cinema Q. 1 i. 67 Documentary is a clumsy description, but let it stand. The French who first used the term only meant travelogue.

1932 Film in National Life (Rep. Comm. Educ. & Cult. Films) viii. 115 §174 A deliberate documentary film must be a transcript of real life, a bit of what actually happened, under approximately unrehearsed conditions.

1934 Punch 26 Dec. 720/1 Most documentary films seem to hinge upon the exposition of some staple industry.

1957 V. J. Kehoe Technique Film & Television Make-up i. 17 Some producers do not like the smoothness of the face created by the use of make-up. They strive to achieve what is termed a documentary effect..by the lack of make-up on men (even at times, on women).

1962 Observer 8 July 20/4 Henry Cecil's light legal documentary fiction.

1935 R. Spottiswoode Gram. of Film 288 The documentary as he defines it is still flourishing.

1936 Times Lit. Suppl. 25 Jan. 72/3 The documentary film—or, tout court, ‘documentary’.

1941 B.B.C. Gloss. Broadc. Terms 3 Actuality, presentation of real persons and things to give a picture of contemporary life in a particular aspect; documentary.

1947 J. Hayward Prose Lit. since 1939 32 ‘Mass-Observation’, whose intriguing ‘documentaries’ of the British people at work and play contain the crude substance of innumerable novels, biographies, and essays.

1957 Listener 18 July 103/1 Mr. Owen's ‘documentary’, as he calls his attractive book, reveals him as an acute observer.

1857 J. Ruskin Polit. Econ. Art ii. 126 These copies..would be historically and documentarily valuable.

1953 New Statesman 10 Oct. 419 A documentarist of sensation.

1959 Times 3 Nov. 15/3 The most ruthless of documentarists.

1961 Times 1 June 6/4 It is a film about film-making... A simple, puppyish documentarist has moved into the ‘pad’ of a group of junkies.

1962 Times 26 Apr. 8/5 The Swedish documentarist..in his new film.