1893 F. Boas in Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. 31 69/1 [In a vocabulary list] Quotative.

1902 Amer. Anthropologist 4 401 The quotative wAnsū′ga, ‘they say’, is used extensively in the Skidegate dialect.

1957 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. xxviii. 95 With other verbs, notably the outright quotatives that connote the adoption or assertion of a view..concord gives a different meaning.

1975 Language 51 804 The first example is provided by quotatives in Luiseño.

2006 Hamilton (Ont.) Spectator (Nexis) 31 Oct. g5 Research also looked at four features of grammar: intensifiers (‘That's so cool.’);..quotatives (‘He was like, “oh hi”.’); [etc.].

1701 J. Godolphin Orphan's Legacy (ed. 4) iii. xxv. 447 As thus it is in Quantities Numerical, so also it holds in Quantities known and distinguished from the other by being Quotative, or indeed more properly Quantitative; as if a Testator intending to devise all his Mansion-house, doth express himself only by the one Moiety or third part thereof.

1811 A. Grant Ess. Superstit. Highlanders II. 357 A mind enfeebled by ‘eating cares’, which will not yield even to ‘soft Lydian airs’. I am very quotative to day.

1891 Sat. Rev. 12 Sept. 304/1 Mr. Liddell, though still quotative, is straightforward.

1932 ‘E. Queen’ Egyptian Cross Myst. xix. 196 ‘As long as you're in the quotative mood,’ smiled Ellery,..‘you might consider the fact that hospes nullus tam in amici hospitium diverti potest..odiosus siet.’

1905 Amer. Anthropologist 7 660 Sentence 6 is quotative, something that one has heard stated.

1957 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. xxviii. 26 A reflex..may be re-worded to make it less quotative.

1991 Amer. Speech 66 228 The majority of our examples of like in this new quotative function are from young women.

2004 G. Nunberg Going Nucl. 266 Young people in the eighties started to use the word as what linguists call a quotative marker, as in ‘I was like, “That is so uncool.”’