The noun contact was turned into a verb about 1834. Its use was primarily technical, and it was noted by the OED in 1891. Sometime in the 1920s a nontechnical use of contact as a transitive verb began in the United States. The earliest citation in the OED Supplement is also, so far as we know, the earliest complaint about the use. It is from a 1927 review in The Spectator, a British periodical, of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Dreiser's use, if someone should find it, would then be the earliest on record, as the novel was published in 1925.
It is unlikely that Dreiser invented the use. In all probability he simply used something that was in the air. Our earliest citation does not suggest that this contact was suspected to be anything unusual:
Men are divided in thought and feeling. They are no longer satisfied to be either churchmen or atheists, but are beginning to contact God vaguely, uncertainly, in many ways —Springfield (Mass.) Union, 14 Jan. 1926
Our next example does place the word in quotation marks as if it were new or special; one of our editors thought it might be intended to mean "to subject to the attentions of a contact man":
The Bureau also began to "contact" national advertisers, to divulge the secret that newspapers were as good as magazines for national campaigning —Tide, April 1928
Our third citation shows a use that helps explain why contact has remained alive; the substitutes usually recommended as "more precise" will not work very well here. Try consult, talk with, telephone, write to (the list from Little, Brown 1986) in this context:
Bourne said he had been unable to contact Santo Domingo since the last weather report was received here at 2:12 p.m. —Springfield (Mass.) Republican, 14 Sept. 1930
Although the earliest objection to the use was published in England, our files show no direct British influence on the earliest American objectors. Reader's Digest 1983 opines that "the anglophile literary establishment" was a prime force in the controversy, but our evidence suggests that it started in the newspapers. Two events in the early 1930s seem to have fueled the controversy. On 1 Dec. 1931 several newspapers (we have clippings from the New York Times and the Boston Post) carried a story about one F. W. Lienau, a high official of Western Union, who denounced the verb contact and tried to get other officials of the company to forbid its use. The ensuing publicity lasted into 1932. Then in March 1932 the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped. There was intense publicity about the case, and contact cropped up often in the reporting of it, as in this news summary from an edition of the Los Angeles Times: "Lindbergh twice contacts kidnappers."
A 1935 clipping duly notes the presence of the literary establishment. A columnist in the Brooklyn Times-Union quotes Yale English professor William Lyon Phelps, who had a column in Scribner's, as denouncing the word. In 1938 the New Republic decided to campaign against the word. Opdyke 1939 is the first of the commentators in our library to express disapproval. From the 1940s on there is quite a lot of negative comment, and subsequently contact has become part of the standard furniture of usage books and college handbooks.
The assault on contact seems to have been based on two factors: the verb was formed from the noun by functional shift, and the use is supposed to have originated in business jargon. The first objection has been made for many other words of similar origin; yet, no objection has been raised to an even larger number of words formed in the same way. Functional shift has been an increasingly common method of word-formation in our language since Middle English. And the original functional shift of contact had taken place nearly a century earlier than the emergence of the disputed usage. It does not appear to be a strong basis for objection.
Of the ascribed origin in business jargon we cannot be certain. Early evidence is too sparse to support a judgment, even though there is plenty of later evidence of business use. Further doubt is cast by the speculations of a 1935 Brooklyn newspaper columnist, who claims a telegrapher told him that telegraphers had been using it for years. The same columnist also mentions army use in World War I. No evidence has yet appeared to confirm these speculations. Our present knowledge of the origin of the use, then, is still incomplete.
The objection in Great Britain to contact as an Americanism is on sounder ground, but it has proved so useful there, according to Longman 1984, that it is commonly used in all but the most formal contexts. The OED Supplement gives no warning label.
The real reason for the American objection is most likely popularity, as Safire 1982 observes. Sudden popularity underlies many a usage problem—see, for instance, hopefully and split infinitive. Safire goes on to comment that contact "has fought its way into standard usage."
One of the interesting features of the dispute over contact is the growing number of commentators who have thrown in the towel. One of the earliest must have been the British critic Ivor Brown, who is quoted in Mencken 1963 as denouncing the word in 1940 and by Gowers 1948 as allowing that it might be justified (his reluctant change of heart was published in Brown 1945). Coppe-rud 1970 lists several commentators who find it acceptable, and Bernstein 1971, Kilpatrick 1984, and Reader's Digest 1983 can be added to his list. Geoffrey Nunberg, writing in The Atlantic (December 1983), wonders why anyone bothered to object; he represents the younger generation of the split between generations that Follett 1966 forecast. While Copperud claims the consensus of commentators to approve the usage, it has curiously become a fixture in the lists of disapproved usages reproduced in college handbooks. Thus we find that the newspaper writers who first raised the hue and cry have come to terms with usage, but the college English teachers, who came late into the game, are still fighting it.
All the fuss seems to have had no effect on actual use. The verb's usefulness seems to lie in the two characteristics mentioned by Bernstein when he came to accept it. It is short, usually replacing a longer phrase like "get in touch with." It is also not specific (vague is the term its disparagers prefer) and for that reason is especially useful in such expressions—common in advertising—as "contact your local dealer." Such contact could be made by telephone, by mail, or simply by walking in. The writer does not need to speculate on how it might happen.
... more people are using a computer at home to contact information services —Erik Sandberg-Diment, NY. Times, 15 Feb. 1983
... editors could do so by contacting Moses' man, who would contact Moses —Gay Talese, Harper's, January 1969
Alumnae interested in attending should contact the Public Relations Office —Erica Jong, Barnard Alumnae, Winter 1971
What do you believe would be the effect on humanity if the earth were contacted by a race of such ungodlike but technologically superior beings? — Playboy, September 1968
Our evidence indicates that the verb contact is standard. It is not much used in literary contexts nor in the most elevated style. It is all right virtually anywhere else, however, with the probable exception of freshman English papers, where the instructors are likely to be observing the continuing opposition of the handbooks.(资料出处：韦伯斯特英语用法词典)