Antedating of "Yalie"

[James Smith]

There were the Gay Nineties and the Roaring Twenties,
but what came in between?  I can't recall similar
names for the two decades 1900 - 1919.

I still hear and read references to the "first half of
the century" and similar statements that make
reference to the 20th century, indicating to me that
the reality of a new century and millennium has not
entirely sunk in.



--- sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
> >John Baker writes:
> >        As for the suggestion that names for
> decades get coined only after
> >the completion of the decade, it's inconsistent
> with our experience in the
> >nineties, eighties, seventies, and so forth.  I
> suppose it's possible that
> >names like the Naughty Nineties could come after
> the fact - certainly a
> >name like that cannot precede the decade, as
> nineties by itself can.
> >~~~~~~~~~
> I wonder, though, how far into each decade we were
> when we began to refer
> to present circumstances as "the eighties," &c.  I
> think for now the
> novelty of the  twenty-first century is what strikes
> us first when we
> locate ourselves in time. A designation for the
> first decade may really not
> be needed for a while.
> We tend to speak of the early years of the twentieth
> century, not by decade
> but by  reference to WWI.
> A. Murie

=====
James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.

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