"sharper" and "shark" (nouns)

[Wilson Gray]

My thanks to both of you. When I was a kid and a big fan of the horse
opera, to the extent that I could distinguish between "Lash" Larue and
"Whip" Wilson, trying to decide whether I was hearing "card shark" or
"card sharp" used to drive me nuts.

-Wilson

On 10/3/07, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "sharper" and "shark" (nouns)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 10/3/07, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > The earliest "card sharper" is 1850; the earliest "card sharp" is 1876.
> >
> > OED2 does not have "card shark"!
>
> As I just posted in the other thread, we now have "card sharp" from
> 1858 and "card shark" from 1884:
>
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003448.html
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509a&L=ads-l&P=18683
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
>
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