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Notwithstanding my earlier objections--and Jon's--here's a case to
be made for "funnel".<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://goo.gl/HTCIt">http://goo.gl/HTCIt</a><br>
Harper's Magazine. Volume 101 (603). August 1900<br>
Milo Bush's Ride Down the Fifth Avenue. By Hayden Carruth. p. 476/2<br>
<blockquote type="cite">We come to the top of Murray Hill. It's an
all-fired steep hill, and long. Just then I noticed that the
driver was a-pulling pretty hard on the lines. Says I, 'That won't
wash, not <i>hardly!' </i>and I just reached up with my
umbrell'-handle and hooked 'em in. I had noticed that the shafts
were a-lifting middling powerful on the hoss. and that his feet
had been scratching pretty light, so as I hooked in the lines I
sot back heavy and far and down went the back of that hansom,
kerplunk, and up went that hoss like a fishing-pole, his legs
a-fanning the air ten thousand strokes to the second, and the ve-<i>hick</i>-le
shooting down Murray Hill like butter <span class="gstxt_hlt">through
a tin horn, </span>with the smoke and cinders from my cigar
fiying forty rods behind us. Young man. maybe them New-Yorkers
didn't open their eyes and gawk! <i>Mebby </i>they didn't. Why,
they gawked like hens at a chicken-hawk!</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://goo.gl/2YVX6">http://goo.gl/2YVX6</a><br>
Elihu Root collection of United States documents. Appendix II:
Foreign Relations of the United States. 1894. Affairs in Hawaii.
1895<br>
[Inclosure 2 in No. 36.] [Advertiser report of mass meeting,
February 13, 1894.] p. 1230<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span class="st">J. B. At</span>herton then
moved that the nominations be closed, which was carried, and D. B.
Smith had been sent through the meeting like water through a tin
horn.</blockquote>
<br>
There are a total of 40 ghits in GB prior to 1900 matching "through
a tin horn", all from 1886 to 1900. Of these, about half are
repetitive, including the two above. The rest, save one, all refer
to the "tin horn" as a predecessor of a megaphone, or something
similar. The one remaining refers to agricultural use of a "tin
horn" to uniformly distribute seeds for planting.<br>
<br>
So, prior to the 1880s, the meaning has been almost exclusively for
an improvised or imitation cornet, then a children's toy (possibly
merely covered with "tin foil"). From the 1880s, the expression
appears to have referred essentially to a metal cone to enhance the
sound, i.e., a type of a loudspeaker. But it's not until the
mid-1890s that any meaning resembling a funnel appears. The
demarcations are all approximate, based solely on GB resources.<br>
<br>
VS-)<br>
<br>
On 4/4/2012 3:36 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:201204041937.q34HtZb0025401@waikiki.cc.uga.edu"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I've never had any inkling that "tin horn" was a term for a funnel. Why
would it be?
The theory I formulated decades ago on the basis of either nothing or a
single cite is that the original expression was "like spit through a tin
horn." At least it makes sense.
HDAS "shit" entries, enough to fill a book of their own, are somewhat
disorganized and so hard to access in their teeny digitized-image form that
I'm not even going to look.
JL
</pre>
</blockquote>
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