Going Postal (Feb. 1993 WIRED?)

Fred Shapiro fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Sat Dec 14 22:28:44 UTC 2002


On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 01:17:06PM -0500, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
> > Do I read the OED entry correctly?  "Going Postal" is from a
> >February 1993 edition of WIRED?
>
> No, it's February 1994; we found this out too late to get the
> correction in.

OK, then the real earliest usage is likely the following:

1993 _St. Petersburg Times_ 17 Dec. (Nexis)  The symposium was sponsored
by the U.S. Postal Service, which has seen so many outbursts that in some
circles excessive stress is known as "going postal."

Fred Shapiro

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