"poser" (before 1990?)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 17:46:47 +0200, Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
wrote:

>> Was anybody using the teenage term "poser" before 1990? That's the
>> earliest date I've found on Usenet.
>
>I recall fellow students using the word "poser" in my high school in
>Norwich England from 1979 to 1980 and at Leeds University from 1980 to
>1984. It was very popular in England in the early '80s.

This sense of "poser" was popularized in British rock circles in the early
to mid-'70s.  It then spread to the U.S. in the late '70s via the punk
movement (see, for instance, the 1999 movie "SLC Punk" for an entertaining
depiction of the term's use in the early '80s by punks in Salt Lake City).

Here's what I find on Rock's Backpages:

-----
"Slade in the USA" by Keith Altham, _NME_, June 1973
I wondered if the group were allowing their visual images to bury any
musical validity they might possess: and whether things like their
campaigns for British Rail weren't just a bit too polite for Slade. Are
they turning into a bunch of posers.
-----
"King Crimson's Robert Fripp" by Steven Rosen, _Guitar Player_, May 1974
Jeff Beck’s guitar playing I can appreciate as good fun. It’s where the
guitarist and "poser-cum-ego tripper-cum-rock star-cum entertainer"
becomes all involved in the package.
-----
"Jesse Winchester: The Only Fools On The Road Tonight Are The Fools On The
Midnight Bus" by Andy Childs, _ZigZag_, November 1976
The place was so insufferably cramped with genuine fans and tedious posers
squashed side by side that it became too much of an ordeal to try and
derive any enjoyment out of the proceedings.
-----
"The Sex Pistols" by Caroline Coon, 1977 (Book Excerpt: _1988: The New
Wave Punk Rock Explosion_)
'I used to go up and down the Kings Road gobbing at the posers and pissing
around,' he [sc. Johnny Rotten] says, his eyes flashing in mischievous
memory.
-----
"Sham 69" by Danny Baker, _ZigZag_, September 1977
Sham 69 ain't the poser's idea of punk.
-----
"Voyage Of The Damned" by Peter Silverton, _Sounds_, December 1977
At 9.28 p.m. precisely, the enigmatic Brian James arrives. Erica, who’s
with him, points me out and he comes over and asks why I called him a
poser and a pain in my review of the Damned album. I don’t think he
believed me when I told him it was because he was a chronic poser and
kicked the habit when things started to get rough in the Damned camp.
"What do you mean by poser? And you’re one, anyway."
-----
[etc.]


--Ben Zimmer