Antedating of "Fan"

[Gerald Cohen]

  At last summer's annual meeting of SABR (Society for American
Baseball Research), Peter Morris spoke on the origin of the term
"fan" and won the Society's award for the best paper presented at the
conference. He plans to publish it, although I'm not sure which
journal he's selected. The appearance of the article will of course
be warmly welcomed.

Gerald Cohen



At 6:56 AM -0500 1/5/04, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>OED and HDAS have 1889 as their earliest citation for the modern word
>_fan_ 'fanatic.' I believe that Barry Popik and David Shulman have pushed
>this back to 1887 in articles in American Speech and Comments on
>Etymology.  Here is earlier from Paperofrecord.com:
>
>1886 _Sporting News_ 31 May 5 (Paperofrecord.com)  The Boston fans explain
>the poor playing of their nine so far by saying that Radbourne does not
>get effective until June, while Buffinton has had a lame shoulder, Sam
>Wise has been sick and Burdock has been slow about getting down to work.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
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