red-headed stepchild

[Jonathan Lighter]

Don't know about earlier, but I have heard "I'll frail him like a red-headed stepchild" in Tennessee within the past ten years or less.

JL

Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Sam Clements
Subject: red-headed stepchild
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I can find a 1910 cite in Newspaperarchive that uses this metaphor about =
the South. =20

Is there anything earlier? I can understand that a stepchild might be =
treated poorly, but why the red-headed? Were red heads thought less of =
in history?

samclem
Doing research on a Straightdope subject

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