Word "Baseball" in 1755

[Fred Shapiro]

A little while ago I used Eighteenth Century Collections Online to find
the earliest surviving example of the word "base-ball" (in a 1760 English
children's book).  Now I have found a 1755 usage in ECCO, although it is
of lesser interest in that this is clearly a game unrelated to the modern
one:

1755 John Kidgell _The Card_ I. 9  The younger Part of the Family,
perceiving Papa not inclined to _enlarge_ upon the Matter, retired to an
_interrupted_ Party at _Base-Ball_, (an _infant_ Game, which as it
advances in its _Teens_, improves into _Fives_, and in its State of
_Manhood_, is called _Tennis_.

My previous discovery was published by the N.Y. Times in a letter, but
this one is probably not worth my writing to them about.

Fred Shapiro


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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
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