Nitty-gritty redux

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 02:08:34PM -0500, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 06:55:17PM -0000, Michael Quinion wrote:
> > Looking for something else, I stumbled across this pastiche in the
> > Daily Journal (Commerce, Texas) for 19 June 1956. Note the presence
> > of "nitty gritty" - is this earlier than previous examples?
>
> OED has a 1952 example, but this antedates our earliest adjectival
> use (which had been 1964).

Also, note that the 1923 and two 1949 examples of "nitty-gritty" on
newspaperarchive are all bogus (1975 articles misdated, etc.).

Jesse Sheidlower
OED