Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:08 AM -0700 9/22/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>The only terms I recall hearing in NYC in the '50s were "sneakers"
>(mostly for the low-quarters but applicable to either), "tennis
>shoes" (low-quarters only), and "gym shoes" (almost exclusively the
>high-quarters). "Basketball shoes" may have been in use for the
>"hightops" (is that a recent coinage?) but I'm not sure.

My recollections are similar; "sneakers" was the default and "tennis
shoes" and "hi(gh)-tops" were used as well.

>
>   US Keds were the prestige brand, but PF Flyers had their aficionados too.
>
>   There was a superstition, supposedly based on some weird parental
>injunction, that if you wore sneakers too often, your eyesight would
>deteriorate, eventually to the point of blindness

Well, maybe, but we all knew of more enjoyable ways to bring off the
same result.

>"because of the rubber in the soles."  The hightops had thicker
>soles and were therefore more dangerous and "macho" (another unknown
>word at the time: there was no concise synonym).
>
LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org