[Ads-l] wondering about the origin of "sleigh riding" in New York

[Dan Goncharoff]

A quick look at Google indicates it's a NJ thing.

On Fri, Jan 1, 2021, 1:21 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I 've never heard the term "sleigh-riding" applied to sleds, but when I was
> a tad in NYC in the mid-1950s, I called a sled a "sleigh" till I was five
> or six years old, and I don't recall ever being directly corrected.
>
> "Sleigh" for "sled" is likewise reflected in this:
>
> 1895 _New York Herald_ (Jan. 30) 10: Further on two little girls in knitted
> hoods hop cheerily along with a skate apiece, followed at  distance by a
> tot with a sled. An envious mate calls out, "Ho, don't them Brown girls
> think they're fine wid skates and a sleigh!"
>
> The Dictionary of American Regional English has an entry with quotations
> beginning in Ohio in 1827, the first of which actually includes the term
> "sleigh-riding.":
>
> "Two weeks since, it was ...covered with boys and men amusing themselves
> with skating and sleigh-riding on the ice, for want of snow."
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Jan 1, 2021 at 12:11 PM Michael Malone <mikemalone5a at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi! I sincerely hope I did this correctly and did not violate the norms.
> > I'm a journalist looking to do a story on the term "sleigh riding", which
> > is how snow sledding is referred to in New York, despite there not being
> a
> > sleigh involved. Wondering if anyone might help trace where/when/how the
> > term came to be.
> > Thank you and happy new year.
> > Mike Malone
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org