Gay Nineties, etc.

[Frank Abate]

Barry P posted what follows.  My own research (in connection with trying to
find a word for the first decade of the 1900s -- there seems not to have
been one) suggests that this is not only the earliest cite for referring to
the 1890s as "Gay Nineties", but that it is the first time (!!!) that ANY
decade was referred to by a single collective epithet.

I encourage others to find and post any earlier dated evidence showing that
a decade had an epithet, in American English at least, if not all Englishes.
I'm referring to the likes of "Roaring Twenties", etc.  Of course, much
later we had epithets for the 50s, 60s, etc.  Some caught on, some were
nonce or ephemeral.

Frank Abate

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GAY NINETIES

   "Gay Ninties" is the name for the decade of the 1890s--and not called
that
until the 1920s.
   In my post from January 1997 (still in the ADS-L old archives),  I stated
that I believed this was coined by the cartoonist R. V. Culter, who used
this
as the title of his 1927 book.  The earliest citation on NYT full text is
1926, but this fact confirms Culter's coinage.  Culter began GAY NINETIES as
a cartoon series on the New York City humor magazine LIFE--in 1925.

19 July 1926, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 8:
_SOUTHAMPTON SEES_
   _AMATEUR CIRCUS_
(...)
   Judy Hamlin and Betty Gleason, with large pompadours, broad hats and puff
sleaves, dashed about in a run-about labeled "The Gay Nineties."

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Frank Abate
Dictionary & Reference Specialists (DRS)
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(860) 349-5400
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