"tiger-lion", 1748, not in OED

[Joel S. Berson]

"tiger-lion", 1748, not in OED.  Perhaps deserving, since the journal
"Nature" used the term.

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And any Gentleman or others minded to purchase the [Li]ving Creature
called a Tyger-Lion, (which is still to be seen there) may [tr]eat
with the Owner at said Place.

Boston Evening-Post, 1748 Feb. 29, 2/1.  EAN.

(This does not show up in EAN search, nor does EAN find any other
"t[y|i]ger-l[y|i]on"s.  The page is torn.  The missing letters are
supplied by Mary Caroline Crawford, in "Social Life in Old New
England" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1914), p. 446, and deemed possible by myself.)

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An adjectival use appears in Nature, vol. 47 (April 27, 1893), p.
607, col. 2.  Date verified from running header.  GBooks.

Lion-tiger and Tiger-lion Hybrids.  [title of article]

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I have not attempted an exhaustive search for earlier
tiger-lions.  Since GBooks ignores punctuation even when a phrase is
quoted, there are too many false positives (such as "tiger, lion,
..." in lists).

Joel

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