Latest OED Additions

[Fred Shapiro]

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

> earliest example of this phrase. 1975 is the earliest example
> in the entry, with 1924 as the first quote for the sense as a
> whole. If you have something earlier for _play_ I'll happily
> put it in.

What I had was the 1969 Ehrlichman quote, already posted by Ben Zimmer
earlier today.  It is interesting that Safire's New Political Dictionary
quotes Ehrlichman as saying the phrase appeared in a 1968 Wall Street
Journal article, but a ProQuest search fails to pull up such an article.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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