antedating?: "top dollar"

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Mon Apr 23 14:57:40 UTC 2007


On 4/23/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> OED has 1970, but Google Books cites an issue of _Trucking Business_ from
> no later than 1964:
>
> "With all that work you put in... Why aren't you drawing top dollar?"
>
> Google Books asserts that the latest issue they scanned is from that year.

Why would we believe anything Google Books asserts at this point?
Searching on years in that volume of _Trucking Business_ finds
references in nearby pages to a company's 1967 earnings and to
industry projections for 1968. So 1967 seems a more likely bet.


--Ben Zimmer

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