[Ads-l] Further Antedating of "Preppy"

[Laurence Horn]

> On Oct 26, 2019, at 9:20 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> True, true.
> 
> But with billions and zillions of printed words available, many of them
> written by former preppies, how is it that the word has been statistically
> almost nonexistent for most of its lifetime?
> 
> Beats me.
> 
> JL

Maybe it was existent all those years—but inChoate.

LH
> 
> On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 11:35 PM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>> "Preppy" doesn't even have the excuse of having being thought coarse or
>>> unprintable.
>> 
>> True, but it's also not a word that would have fallen trippingly from the
>> tongues of the lower orders. I thought that _Choate_ was pronounced
>> "Cho-ate," until I became a buddy of a Yalie who was a Choate grad while I
>> was serving in the Army Security Agency. Even when the preppy style of
>> dress became popular among the plebs, it was known as "Ivy League" and not
>> as "preppy."
>> 
>> On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 5:03 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Maybe I've said this before, but what is most interesting in such cases
>> is
>>> not the remarkable age of the term, but the fact that decades (in this
>>> case, many decades) evidently had to elapse before it entered common
>>> currency.
>>> 
>>> "Preppy" doesn't even have the excuse of having being thought coarse or
>>> unprintable.
>>> 
>>> JL
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 2:31 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I have previously antedated the noun "preppy" (formerly having a 1956
>>>> first use citation in the OED) back to 1928.  Here is a much earlier
>>> cite:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> preppy, n. (OED 1928)
>>>> 
>>>> 1880 _Occident_ (Colorado College newspaper) 1 Apr. 17/1 (Elephind)
>> Now
>>>> the thirsty preppie goes to the hydrant, faint and far; he drinks
>>> directly
>>>> from its notes, or takes a Leyden-jar.
>>>> 
>>>> Fred Shapiro
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> "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
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> -----
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -Mark Twain
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "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