Sound Bite (1973); Smithfield Ham (1888); Liberty Cabbage (1918)

[Fred Shapiro]

yOn Mon, 2 Dec 2002 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

> SOUND BITE
>    Not food, but if you do eat, take a good, sound bite.
>    19 July 1973, WASHINGTON POST, Pg. A18:
>    NBC had a crew on hand for two full days of the convention, and WTOP
> carried several informative stories with filmed interviews and sound
> bites from speeches.

This is a substantial improvement on the 1980 dating in OED and Safire's
New Political Dictionary.  Here is a slightly earlier citation:

1973 _N.Y. Times_ 21 Jan. 127 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)  "Sound
bite" is simply a sound statement -- a person talking on film, as opposed
to silent.

Fred Shapiro


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------