one-night stand (1878)

[Laurence Horn]

>one-night stand (OED3 1880)
>
>1878 _Inter Ocean_ (Chicago, Ill.) 24 June 1/3 John T. Raymond is
>making arrangements with manager Jack, of the Oil circuit, for an
>extended tour of the country next season, embracing all the smallest
>cities and one-night stands.
>[19th C US Newspapers]
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
And then there's the racier "extended use" of OED's sense (b), which
is clearly illustrated in the Orson Welles quote from 1956--

Mr. Arkadin I. i. 10 The sort of men Mily met weren't interested in
marriage. They saw her as a one-night stand. And she, poor kid,
always hoped it would last.

but more doubtfully in the Shavian cite from 1916:

Let. 14 May in B. Shaw & Mrs. Campbell (1952) 186, I told you not to
do those one-night stands.

We'd have to read the letter to determine whether this illustrates
the (a) or (b) sense, but given that this was probably a letter from
Shaw to his well-known actress friend Mrs Campbell, it would betoken
the original theatrical sense in (a), and thus leave the Welles 1956
as the first cite for (b)--one which virtually cries out for an
antedating.  And gets one in HDAS:  an entry in Partridge's 1937
Dictionary of the Underworld (and various others from 1940 on).  But
I would surmise that can be pushed back a decade or two...

LH

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