Rubberneck

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:39 PM -0400 9/8/00, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Laurence Horn wrote [overhastily]:
>
>  > Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be in the OED...



>_Rubberneck_, often considered to be one of the greatest slang coinages,
>is in the OED.  The earliest citation is from George Ade in 1896.
>_Rubbernecking_ is recorded from 1927, _rubbernecker_ from 1934.
>
>Fred
>

Silly me! (Hand to forehead.)
As usual, I was looking on line, and happened to check only
"rubbernecker" and "rubbernecking", not the basic verb itself.  (In
my defense, I \could/ note that Ade's use involved the gerund, so
that technically the verb might be argued to be a
back-formation....naaah.   Well, I didn't say it wasn't in the OED,
just that it didn't seem to be.)

Curious that "rubberneck" itself also occurred early on as an
exocentric compound noun, where we would now (stateside, at least)
use "rubbernecker", which didn't get a cite of its own until 1934.
(I guess if a clam can be a littleneck and a beer can be a longneck,
a person can be a rubberneck.)
================
Someone who stares; an inquisitive person; a sight-seer, a tourist.

        1899 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. May 726 Oh, no! in the language of
the shop, she was only a `rubber-neck'.

        1909 G. B. McCutcheon Truxton King iii. 41 They are the
nobility-the swells. They don't hang around the streets like tourists
and
        rubbernecks.

        1918 I. Hay Last Million xii. 188 Attended by a respectfully
interested cohort of disciples, or rubbernecks.

        1937 Daily Herald 6 Feb. 6 One of its valuable features will
be to deprive the rubber-necks, who gloat over the domestic troubles
of their
        neighbours in the local police court, of their entertainment.

        1941 J. Smiley Hash House Lingo 46 Rubber neck, tourist.