The Gay Nineties

[Frank Abate]

A further note, related in a general way:  Last year, prior to the new millennium (depending on how you count) furor in the media, we did some research at OUP and with the help of Fred Shapiro re the use of terms referring to entire decades.  This was in trying to find an appropriate term for our PRESENT DECADE, that is, 2000-2010.  No term has yet caught on, as far as I know, though many have been proferred.  ADS folks should deep track of this.

Also, and interestingly, I think, we concluded from the research that people did not think/speak in terms of decades, such that they gave them names, prior to the 1920s (Fred S has the exact info on this, I believe).  In any case, the first uses of "Roaring Twenties" are from 1927 (as I recall).  Furthermore, we could not find ANY evidence of a term in general use, at the time or shortly before/after, for the first decade of the 20th century, that is, 1900-10.

So, the wait continues for a term for THIS decade, a la Gay Nineties, Roaring Twenties, etc., with no good precedent we know of.  Keep an eye and ear out.

Frank Abate


American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
>
> This is a real goody -- another gleaning from my word-of-the-semester
> project in HOTEL:  A student whose word was "gay" said that before
> this semester she had always assumed that "the Gay Nineties" was a
> reference to the 1990s, when "so many people came out of the closet."
>    --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)
>