Antedating of "Windy City"

[Jonathan Lighter]

There's also a difference between a descriptive "windy city" and a fully lexicalized "Windy City."  Not that it's necessarily possible to tell just when the phrase became a cliche' synonym for "Chicago."

  JL

Dennis Baron <debaron at UIUC.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Dennis Baron
Subject: Re: Antedating of "Windy City"
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Is there anything in the rest of the context of these cites to nail
down the meaning of windy city, ie does it in fact come from windy
politicians, as all my Chicago we-know-more-than-you-silly New
Yorkers-do relatives insist, or meteorological wind? Or what?

Dennis




On Nov 6, 2006, at 11:11 AM, Fred Shapiro wrote:


Windy City (OED 1887, Popik 1876)

1860 _Milwaukee Daily Sentinel_ 4 July 1 (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
We are proud of Milwaukee because she is not overrun with a lazy police
force as is Chicago -- because her morals are better, he [sic] criminals
fewer, her credit better; and her taxes lighter in proportion to her
valuation than Chicago, the windy city of the West.

1869 _Milwaukee Daily Sentinel_ 28 Apr. (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
Chicago is evidently appreciated by the people of Gotham, as witness the
following from the New York _World_: ... The windy city is to become the
paradise of parks, and the modern-created Eden is to be the grand
watering
place of the world.

1870 _Daily Cleveland Herald_ 4 June (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
CLEVELAND vs. CHICAGO. The Great Game Between the Forest City and
Chicago
Clubs -- The Windy City Wins by a Score of 15 to 9 -- A Hotly Contested
Game.

1875 _St. Louis Globe-Democrat_ 8 June 2 (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
>From the Cincinnati Commercial. ... As might be expected, he next
visited
Chicago, and invested his capital in a tangle-foot whisky establishment,
and some loose matrimonial bonds which he found lying around loose in
that
windy city.

Fred Shapiro


------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press
Yale Law School ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu http://
quotationdictionary.com
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