Definition of "attestation"

A historical dictionary cannot do this though it cannot also neglect this aspect because the attestation of a rare meaning is bound to be very limited.

1972, Indian Linguistics‎, volumes 33-34, Linguistic Society of India, page 237

The eastern-most attestation of Sl skola in the meaning of synagogue appears to be in Smolensk Russian.

1987, Paul Wexler, Explorations in Judeo-Slavic Linguistics‎, page 125

So something must have been developing over long periods empty of attestation; and whatever it was, it must (by principles to be discussed in the next section) have been a language of the usual kind.

1997, Roger Lass, Historical Linguistics and Language Change, page 23

For each word, the date of its first attestation in the English language, as documented in the Oxford English Dictionary, and its frequency of occurrence in the British National Corpus are given.

2009, Ingo Plag with Maria Braun, Sabine Lappe, and Mareile Schramm, Introduction to English Linguistics‎, page 110

Furthermore, the first attestations given in the OED are not always the earliest attestations in print; since the first edition was finished in 1928, many earlier and later examples have been identified, and these will be incorporated into the third edition, currently underway (see Durkin 2002 for a discussion of how much this is likely to change the dates of attestation in the OED as a whole).

2010, Kathryn Allan, “Tracing metonymic polysemy through time: MATERIAL FOR OBJECT mappings in the OED”, in Margaret E. Winters, Heli Tissari, Kathryn Allan, editors, Historical Cognitive Linguistics‎, page 176

In the first edition this is generally chronological, i.e. following the earliest date of attestation for each sense

2012, Alexander Bergs, English Historical Linguistics‎, volume 2, Walter de Gruyter, page 1154