parlo(u)r pink, pinko

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:

> Similarly, the OED has one cite for 'pinko' as a noun from 1936; the
> earliest cite for what they call the adjectival use is from 1957 in
> "your pinko pals." (This feels to me more like an attributive use of
> the noun -- cf the awkwardness of "your pals are pinko.") A 1950
> JSTOR article on the vocabulary of Time magazine mentions 'pinko' as
> occurring twice in 1926; I wonder if Luce was responsible for the
> term.

Here is an earlier attributive usage:

1953 _Nation_ 21 Feb. 156  By now the board was characterizing all
opposition as "pinko."

Fred Shapiro


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