fan the ozone (1890), ozoned (1903)

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:53 PM -0400 5/20/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Fri, 20 May 2005 10:47:13 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>wrote:
>
>>Interesting.  There are early enough to make it conceivable that
>>intransitive "fan" ('strike out (swinging)') may have originated as
>>an absolute use of this figure, although perhaps not.  Here's the
>>OED--
>>
>>8. N. Amer. Of a pitcher in baseball: to cause (a batter) to strike out.
>>
>>1909 in WEBSTER.
>>1912 C. MATHEWSON Pitching in a Pinch v. 101 He fanned the next two men.
>>
>>b. intr. Of a batter: to strike out.
>>1886 Outing (U.S.) July 477/2 The man who..'fans out' or 'pops one up'.
>>
>>--and HDAS has 1888 (but no text given) for trans. "fan", along with
>>1901 for "Pitcher Hughes...fanned eleven."
>>
>>Note that in the latter use, called third strikes would be included
>>in the total of players a pitcher fanned; the continuation "...and
>>got three more looking" would be impossible, I'd wager.  The "fan
>>out" in the 1886 cite is an archaism which now sounds like a blend of
>>"strike out" and "fan".
>
>I think that "fan out" was an important stepping stone on the way to "fan"
>meaning 'strike (someone) out'.  The earliest relevant usage that I could
>find was not "fan the ozone" but (unsurprisingly) "fan the air", which by
>1885 came to refer to a batter striking out (in earlier usage it referred
>to a batter swinging but not necessarily striking out -- see cites below).
>
>So here is the historical progression, as far as I can tell:
>
>1. batter "fans the air" (or later "the ozone")
>2a. batter "fans out" (on analogy with "strikes out")
>2b. batter "fans"
>3a. pitcher "fans out" batter (on analogy with "strikes out")
>3b. pitcher "fans" batter (shortened like 2b)
>
>By the time 3b emerged, the original image of the batter "fanning the air"
>with his bat was apparently superceded by the image of the pitcher
>"fanning" the batter with the ball.  (This might just be a post-hoc
>rationalization of a slightly opaque idiom.)
>


Right, I was also thinking after I posted that "fan the air" was a
plausible source for both "fan" and of course expressive
substitutions like "fan the ozone", which I'd never heard before, and
I was surprised none of the OED or HDAS cites had it.  (I was equally
unfamiliar with "fan out".)  But part of the loss of transparency
must have led to "fan" being reinterpreted as 'strike out', whether
by swinging or taking a called third strike (forward or backward K,
if you prefer).  Not much air (or ozone) gets fanned when the batter
is caught looking, although it may turn blue if he doesn't care for
the call.

larry