Ivy League (1934)

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    Merriam-Webster's 11th has 1936 for "Ivy League."
    This is from Google Groups.  I guess these guys hadn't heard that I had
found the same thing:


From: <A HREF="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=author:kirshenbaum%40hpl.hp.com+">Evan Kirshenbaum</A> (<A HREF="mailto:kirshenbaum%40hpl.hp.com">kirshenbaum at hpl.hp.com</A>)
Subject: Re: Ivy League
Newsgroups: <A HREF="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=alt.usage.english">alt.usage.english</A>
Date: 2003-06-05 10:27:28 PST

Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at midway.uchicago.edu> writes:> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:> >
> > The only problem with this is that the way the story is typically> >
told, "Woodward was the first to use it in print" on October 14,> > 1937> > > >

<A HREF="http://shop.store.yahoo.com/ivysport/ivyleaghis.html">http://shop.store.yahoo.com/ivysport/ivyleaghis.html</A>> > > > while the quote I
gave from the AP story in the _Christian Science> > Monitor_ was over 32
months earlier, on February, 7, 1935, and was> > already refering to it as "the
so-called 'Ivy League'", implying> > that the term was already somewhat well
known.> > Several online sources give the date of the Woodward article as>
October 1933, not October 1937, e.g.:Ah.  That would explain it.  Does anybody have
access to the _HeraldTribune_ from 1933 to check?>

<A HREF="http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2002/101702/askbenny.html">http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2002/101702/askbenny.html</A>>  [citing the
preface of Mark F. Bernstein's _Football: The Ivy >  League Origins of an
American Obsession_ (Pennsylvania, 2001)]> >  According to Bernstein, New York
Herald Tribune sportswriter >  Stanley Woodward was the first to use the word
"ivy" in an >  Oct. 14, 1933, article referring to "a proportion of our >
eastern ivy colleges" meeting lesser powers in football games.Ah.>  The eight
schools Woodward included in his nonexistent league >  were Columbia, Yale,
Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton, >  Army and Penn, with Cornell added later in
the story. The >  first use of the exact phrase "Ivy League" in print occurred >
  in a Feb. 8, 1935 story by Associated Press sports editor Alan>  Gould,

Well, that's a day later than the one I found, but I suppose if they're
referring to the same one, it might have taken a day to show up in the paper they
looked at.  (The one I quoted didn't have abyline.)  The fact that the Feb. 7
article used "so-called" makes it hard to believe that it was the first use in
print, though.

-- Evan Kirshenbaum
+------------------------------------HP Laboratories                    |Its like grasping the difference1501
Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141   |between what one usually considersPalo Alto, CA
94304               |a 'difficult' problem, and what|*is* a difficult problem.
The daykirshenbaum at hpl.hp.com             |one understands *why* counting
all(650)857-7572                      |the molecules in the Universe
isn't|difficult...there's the leap.<A HREF="http://www.kirshenbaum.net/">http://www.kirshenbaum.net/</A>        |                Tina
Marie Holmboe

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   Now, we'll do better.  I also searched for "ivy college."
   You can post this to alt.usage.english if you wish:


   10 August 1934, SODA SPRINGS SUN (Soda Springs, Idaho), pg. 7?, col. 3:
   SID LUCKMAN, Columbia university's triple-threat half back, has finally
decided to play professional football with the Chicago Bears. (...)
   The Ivy league lad didn't leap at the chance to turn pro.
(From "Speaking of Sports" by Robert McShane, released by the Western
Newspaper Union syndicate--ed.)


   22 May 1933, CHRONICLE TELEGRAM (Elyria, Ohio), pg.4, col 5:
   Miss Phyllis Pond, a freshman at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, will be
in attendance at (Col. 6--ed.) the Bowdoin College Ivy prom and house party
next week end.


   18 November 1932, CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL (Charleston, WV), pg. 20, col. 5:
   You say he has splendid morals, is not lazy physically, and can work hard
at things outside of the ivy-covered college walls.


   21 November 1931, CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL (Charleston, WV), pg. 5, col. 6:
   Next to the ivy which clings to the college bricks, are you not after all
the most conventional thing on the campus?


   17 November 1931, SHEBOYGAN PRESS (Sheboygan, Wisconsin), pg. 4?, col. 1:
   Entering the community by any of its shaded avenues the visitor glimpses a
vista of boulevards and vine-covered dwellings.  Kohler might be the
fashionable suburb of any city, or a college town, the ivy growing upon its walls.


   25 January 1931, CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL (Charleston, WV), pg. 11, col. 1:
_DOWN THE LINE_
By W. O. McGEEHAN
   _POISON IVY?_
   It must have been the Football League of Nations idea of Dr. Nicholas
Murray Butler that started it.  At any rate Harvard seems to be waving olive
branches in the direction of Princeton and uttering dovelike cries from Cambridge.
The idea is that Harvard and Princeton may resume football relations
somewhere around 2031.
   (McGeehan wrote for the NEW YORK HERALD-TRIBUNE.  See ADS-L archives--ed.)