"Show Up" (noun)

[Jonathan Lighter]

George, I believe  I929 is my earliest as well.

JL

George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: George Thompson
Subject: "Show Up" (noun)
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Here is a nice antedating of the OED. The ever-to-be-cursed Bertelsman
keeps us from knowing what Jon Lighter has.

SHOW UP. -- Joseph Lindsey, well know as an English Burglar and
convict, was on Friday afternoon arrested and taken to the Police
station, Second ward, for the purpose of making the policemen
acquainted with him. . . .
N-Y D Tribune, January 5, 1850, p. 1, col. 7

OED (show, verb, sense 39b) b. A police identification parade. U.S.
slang. 1929 M. A. GILL Underworld Slang 11/1 Show-up, where suspects
are viewed by the police. (also 1932)


George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.


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