Antedating of "Fan"

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

Apart from the contemporaneous etymological reconstructions cited in
Shulman's article in American Speech, is there any evidence of
'fanatic' actually having been used in this sense before 1886?

Geoff Nunberg


>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Gerald Cohen <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Antedating of "Fan"
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>   At last summer's annual meeting of SABR (Society for American
>Baseball Research), Peter Morris spoke on the origin of the term
>"fan" and won the Society's award for the best paper presented at the
>conference. He plans to publish it, although I'm not sure which
>journal he's selected. The appearance of the article will of course
>be warmly welcomed.
>
>Gerald Cohen
>
>
>
>At 6:56 AM -0500 1/5/04, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>>OED and HDAS have 1889 as their earliest citation for the modern word
>>_fan_ 'fanatic.' I believe that Barry Popik and David Shulman have pushed
>>this back to 1887 in articles in American Speech and Comments on
>>Etymology.  Here is earlier from Paperofrecord.com:
>>
>>1886 _Sporting News_ 31 May 5 (Paperofrecord.com)  The Boston fans explain
>>the poor playing of their nine so far by saying that Radbourne does not
>>get effective until June, while Buffinton has had a lame shoulder, Sam
>>Wise has been sick and Burdock has been slow about getting down to work.
>>
>>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
>  >--------------------------------------------------------------------------