Currently I'm writing a paper on Menno Simons, and am looking for the earliest source I can that uses the word Mennonites. I was curious if you all might have a source you go to search of the earliest date of a word that perhaps users had contributed or that was centrally controlled.
Thank you!
Unless I'm mistaken, I believe that's what the Oxford English Dictionary is supposed to do. I'd check there first.
The two sites I usually use don't seem to have sources for this unfortunately... Not sure of any other sites...
Etymology.com gives this, but no sources for it:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Mennonite&allowed_in_frame=0
Mirriam Webster gives earlier, with the German spelling, but again no sources:
I would recommend trying Google Ngram when searching for a specific word or phrase. Although, some problems with Ngram is that it doesn't have every book digitized in its database and it does not tell you what sources it draws upon.