[Ads-l] to daughter out

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Mon May 16 14:43:53 UTC 2022


My husband and I discussed this usage on our blog in 2019: https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2019/06/daughter-out.html.

Earliest example we found was from New Hampshire, 1948.

Pat O'Conner

On May 16, 2022, at 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system <LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>> wrote:

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 1. to daughter out

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Date:    Sun, 15 May 2022 16:38:20 -0400
From:    George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU<mailto:george.thompson at NYU.EDU>>
Subject: to daughter out

Meaning, a family having only daughters, no sons, to continue the line and
name.
>From a discussion group focused on 18th century studies, commenting on
folks who had been required to change their last name in order to inherit
an estate:

In the state of Maine USA they would say a family had "daughtered out." The
cases I've encountered lately are with Mary Delany's brother Bernard
Granville's directing their nephew to take the Granville name. And the
Percy family daughtered out in Lady Betty the richest heiress in Britain.
Her husband was supposed to take Percy but she excused him. He was Chas
Seymour Duke of Somerset, who had become duke  because his predecessor was
murdered. The Percy money daughtered down to their granddaughter whose
husband Sir Hugh Smithson finally took the name Percy.YN

Neither the OED nor DARE have "daughter" as a verb.

--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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End of ADS-L Digest - 11 May 2022 to 15 May 2022 (#2022-119)
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