[Ads-l] Antedates for "Team X"?

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Wed Nov 20 23:05:49 UTC 2019


Here is an entertaining example from 1905 that is syntactically close
to "team X".

"team Y" "team M" "team C" and "team A" battled one another on the
basketball court at the local  "Y. M. C. A."

Date: January 20, 1905
Newspaper: The Times-Democrat
Newspaper Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Article: Basket Ball: Two Interesting Games To-night at the Y. M. C. A.
Quote Page 12, Column 5
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
It will be remembered that team M scored a total of 11 points last
Friday night, against team C's 10 points, while team A was able to
defeat team Y only by the close score of 7 to 5.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 11:57 PM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Team Tara" emerged circa 1995. It is interesting because it is an
> early example of a moniker based on a personal name, specifically, a
> first name. Team Ferrari and Team Ford employed personal names, but, I
> think, the two should more accurately be viewed as company names in
> this context.
>
> Ben Zimmer indicates that "Team Aniston" vs. "Team Jolie" emerged in
> 2005. "Team Macca" vs. "Team Heather" emerged in 2006 with "Team
> Heather" based on a first name.
>
> By 1995 "Team Tara" referred to the women's U.S. national basketball
> team which was coached by Tara VanDerveer.
>
> By 1997 "Team Tara" developed an additional distinct sense. It
> referred to a group of people who were close to Olympic skater Tara
> Lipinski. The group varied in size and composition. The following
> people were sometimes included: Lipinski's parents, her coaches, a
> choreographer, an agent, and Tara herself.

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