Antedating of "Hillbilly"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

> Well and good, but without context how can we determine that this is the
> same lexical item and not just an arbitrary name for a racehorse, like
> (made-up example) "Hill Joey"?

We can't.  That's why I posed my discovery as a question: "And
'hillbilly'?"  We can't all be as confident of our discoveries as Stephen
is about the 'yards.

Fred Shapiro


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