Antedating of "Fellow Traveler"

Dan Goncharoff thegonch at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jun 12 15:44:04 UTC 2014


Russell Baker had a curious use in an Observer piece in the NYTimes of June
25, 1967:

On Sixth Avenue in midtown the other day, there were two slyly grinning
gentlemen standing side by side staring the masses straight in the eye
while one of them held up a small crudely lettered sign saying, "Useful
Idiots".

DanG


On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 8:19 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Antedating of "Fellow Traveler"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On the same topic, is there an early cite for "useful idiot", which was
> supposedly used by Lenin in this sense, but apparently hasn't been found in
> Lenin's work?  It's been revived in the right-wing blogosphere and/or Fox
> News to characterize Democrats who have been putatively "duped" by
> leftists, Islamists, or whoever.
>
> LH
>
> On Jun 11, 2014, at 7:51 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>
> > fellow traveler (OED, 2., 1936)
> >
> >
> >
> > 1933 _N.Y. Times Book Review_ 23 Apr. 2 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
>  ROMANOF is a "fellow traveler," as Trotsky phrased it, more generally and
> sympathetically read by the Western world than by Russia.
> >
> >
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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