QUERY: This one's gonna be fun...

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 25 May 2000, Sallie Lemons wrote:

> Wasn't "sucking face" used on On Golden Pond by the kid character?  I would
> think that might qualify it as something other than new? No?

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang's first use for
this phrase is 1980, from the Preppy Handbook.  However, it was indeed
used earlier in the 1979 play by Ernest Thompson, _On Golden Pond_.


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2