"snow day" superstitions

[Jonathan Lighter]

So there are at least three kinds of "snow days" in current English :

1.  a snowy day. [Presumably a nonlexicalized conversational phrase in use now and again for many decades - or longer.]

2. a notional day set aside during a school year for the possibility that classes might be canceled because of a snowstorm.  [In use and lexicalized since at least 1951.]

3. a day when classes are actually or a school closed owing to a snowstorm. [Whether or not a compensatory day will be added at the end of the school term. It's conceivable that classes might be canceled, but that staff is still expected to come to work.  In that case, students have a "snow day," but staff does not. Lexicalized when ?]

JL

Barbara Need <nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Barbara Need
Subject: Re: "snow day" superstitions
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At 07:07 -0800 03/3/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Also, what's the earliest date fro "snow day" ? This seems to me to
>be from the ''80s - not that I ever took notes on it.

1980s? No, it is certainly earlier than that! I got snow days in
Andover, MA in the 70s. Five were built into the school year, so if
we didn't have any, we ended school a week earlier than planned.

Barbara

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