Antedating of "Windy City"

Fred Shapiro fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Mon Nov 6 17:11:24 UTC 2006


Windy City (OED 1887, Popik 1876)

1860 _Milwaukee Daily Sentinel_ 4 July 1 (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
We are proud of Milwaukee because she is not overrun with a lazy police
force as is Chicago -- because her morals are better, he [sic] criminals
fewer, her credit better; and her taxes lighter in proportion to her
valuation than Chicago, the windy city of the West.

1869 _Milwaukee Daily Sentinel_ 28 Apr. (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
Chicago is evidently appreciated by the people of Gotham, as witness the
following from the New York _World_: ... The windy city is to become the
paradise of parks, and the modern-created Eden is to be the grand watering
place of the world.

1870 _Daily Cleveland Herald_ 4 June (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
CLEVELAND vs. CHICAGO.  The Great Game Between the Forest City and Chicago
Clubs -- The Windy City Wins by a Score of 15 to 9 -- A Hotly Contested
Game.

1875 _St. Louis Globe-Democrat_ 8 June 2 (19th Century U.S. Newspapers)
>From the Cincinnati Commercial. ... As might be expected, he next visited
Chicago, and invested his capital in a tangle-foot whisky establishment,
and some loose matrimonial bonds which he found lying around loose in that
windy city.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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