crush, dead squelch, etc. (1897?)

[Jonathan Lighter]

My grandmother (not a college girl) was very familiar with this nuance of the word "crush." She also used it of boys.  It used to refer to a kind of very youthful asymmetrical friendship in which a usually younger child or teenager looked up to another as a role model.

That was then.

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: crush, dead squelch, etc. (1897?)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Five Colleges Archives Digital Access Project has some interesting
materials. In the collection "Writings About Smith College, 1873-1922"
() there's an unidentified
article titled "Slang of College Girls -- The 'Crush,' 'Dead Squelch,'
and Other Terms Expressive of College Life":

http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/smith/writings/1893-94/slang/01.htm

I've identified this as an article from the New York Sun (date unknown)
that was reprinted in the Boston Globe on Apr 11, 1897:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=309&VName=HNP&did=548378572

It was also reprinted in a few papers on Newspaperarchive, the earliest
appearing Apr 24, 1897 (Centralia Enterprise And Tribune, Wisc.). The Five
Colleges site dates the article to 1893, but it looks like it's from 1897.

The treatment of "crush" in an all-female context is interesting
(including the ppl. a. "crushed", in HDAS from 1895). I don't see "dead
squelch" attested elsewhere.


--Ben Zimmer

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