Antedating of "Wellerism"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Mon Nov 20 02:53:16 UTC 2006


"I see," said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.

-Wilson

On 11/19/06, Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Antedating of "Wellerism"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wellerism (OED 1839)
>
> 1838 _Macon Telegraph_ 2 Oct. 2 (America's Historical Newspapers)
> _Professional Wellerisms_ -- You are a wery nice man; tisnt every day we
> see the likes of you, as the heditor said to his subscriber, who called at
> the office to pay his subscription in hadvance.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam Clemens

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