Earliest Reference to "Ghoti"

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>:

[....]
>
> There's another 1938 cite on Google Books, from Albert Galloway
> Keller's _Brass Tacks_ (p. 16): "It is more than a quip when someone
> offers 'ghoti' as the way to spell 'fish': 'gh'
> as in 'rough,' 'o' as in 'women,' 'ti' as in 'attention.' This is only
> in snippet view, so there's no way of getting more context, but it
> seems to have the same unattributed status as the other cites from
> 1937-38.
> [....]

So far, I see no attribution in the Keller book, now at hand. It's in a
section
titled on "'Talking like People'" and compares English, German and French. It
has ti as in nation, as does the Garfieldian. What does the Christian Science
Monitor has for ti--nation or attention? (it's not given in ads-l archives).
Living Age March 1941 (via Proquest) cites Manchester Guardian on "Refugee
Phoenetics," with "...ti as in ambition."

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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