Yikes! (antedating)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 1/18/06, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
> OED has 1971
>
> "Patter," _The Coe College Cosmos_,  Cedar Rapids, IA. 1941-11-19 p. 2
> col 3.
> "And if you can't think of anything else to be grateful for, just be
> thankful you're not a turkey. It can't be too bad, though; they get the
> axe and we get the bird. Yikes!"

And then there's "yipes" (OED2 1955)...

1943 _Washington Post_ 16 May 3L/2 Indicating that the hallowed "Three
B's" may play almost as vital a role as the "Four Freedoms" in the
restoration of world harmony (yipes!) is the announcement of the
launching of a British chapter of the society, now a weekly feature on
the B.B.C. schedule.
[HNP Doc ID 215468792]

I would guess that both "yikes" and "yipes" could be antedated in
comic strips, which tend to suffer from bad OCR in the newspaper
databases.


--Ben Zimmer

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