wild about Rappaccini's Daughter

[Joel S. Berson]

How *did* I miss this?  I read every Hawthorne short story about 5
years ago with the OED in mind.

He used "salt" = "experienced sailor" in 1835, 5 years before the
current (that is, 1989) record holder, Richard Henry Dana.

And they say Nathaniel didn't employ slang.

Joel

At 5/10/2010 03:51 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>OED has the constr. "wild about" (def. 11c, a bit mildly defined) from 1868
>only: the early preference seems to have been for "wild after."
>
>Hawthorne, however, used the current idiom in "Rappaccini's Daughter" in
>1844:
>
>"You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men in Padua are wild
>about."
>
>JL
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org