Tin Pan Alley

[Arnold Zwicky]

grant barrett:
 >Why do stories giving dubious credit to someone for coining a word
 >or phrase always seem to end with "...and the name stuck"?

there are other variants: "and we call it that to this very day",
"and we still call it that", "and ever since then that's the name
we use", etc.

people like narratives to have a clear conclusion: "and that's
how i remember it", "and that's the way it was", etc., not to
mention "and they lived happily ever after".

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)