Ground Zero; Flying Saucer; Mazda Lane; Hillbilly; T-Bone Steak; Luncheonette

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>    22 November 1896, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 4.
> (OED and the RHHDAS have 1900 for "hillbilly"?  Here it is the name of a
> horse in the second race at New Orleans--ed.)

Horses' names may be a major source of antedatings.  I once wrote an
article in AMERICAN SPEECH showing that the term "skyscraper" originated
as the name of an 18th-century horse.  Recently I found a horse named
Automation mentioned in 1943, five years before the OED's first use for
that word.  And then there's Upset...

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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