Just to put you out of my misery, here's a link, in celebration of my aquisition of OED2 v.3.1, in which these items caught my eye.

http://dictionary.oed.com/newsletters/2003-12/wordsofchoice.html


... but according to this obit, although mentioned very much in passing, the dal~eks story may be apocryphal:

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue42/news.html

!Guess I'll trust the OED at least until proven wrong!)