Antedating of "Queer" as Adjective

[George Thompson]

That is interesting.  Certainly "queer" is the most important word in that posting.  I hadn't checked the OED for its date.

After I posted the message I made a few attempts to find stories of similar incidents ffrom before 1916 through Proquest, but (so far) have not succeeded.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.

----- Original Message -----
From: Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2003 1:14 pm
Subject: Antedating of "Queer" as Adjective

> On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, George Thompson wrote:
>
> > Thanks to the doings of the infamous Random House company and the
> > unspeakable Bertlesmann, we do not have the volume of HDAS that
> might> contain "606".  I suppose the word "queer" must have been
> found in this
> > sense well before 1914.
>
> Actually, "queer" is the notable antedating in what you posted.
> OED has
> 1922 as its first use of "queer" 'homosexual' as an adjective.  It is
> interesting that I recently posted a 1914 antedating for "queer"
> 'homosexual' as a noun, with both antedatings coming out of Southern
> California.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
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