[Ads-l] Slight antedating of "Grim Reaper"

[Wilson Gray]

The Grim Reaper or the "Grime" Reaper, as I read it, _grim_ not yet being a
part of my lexicon, was a comic-book hero(!), back in the '40's. Naturally,
this isn't the Grim Reaper comic-book character from 1968. Together with
the War Eagle, the Face, the Heap, et al., the Grim Reaper is one of the
many secondary superheroes remembered by me and researched by Lou Mougin in
his book, Secondary Superheroes of Golden-Age Comics.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 6:04 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> Here's one a little earlier:
>
> Grim Reaper (OED 1847)
>
> 1846 _Nassau Monthly_ Dec. 137 (ProQuest)  Once more did we hear the sad
> echo of a friend's farewell, and catch a glimpse of the grim reaper, Death.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Slight antedating of "Grim Reaper"
>
> This almost identical to the OED's initial cite, but about a month earlier:
>
> 1847 _Evening Courier_ (Milwaukee) (March 8) 2: IRISH RELIEF MEETING ...
> Famine, the grim Reaper, is gathering a horrid human harvest, amid the
> blight and devastation of nature.
>
> JL
>
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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-- 
- 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

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