The World hates Barry, part 2731

[Baker, John]

No, it denies that the story of the shaggy dog was the first such joke to become popular.  The author asserts, no doubt correctly, that other jokes of the genre were much older.  He says that the shaggy dog story appeared fairly recently (i.e., fairly recently in 1937), implying that the term "shaggy dog" had as well.
 
John Baker
 

________________________________

From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Thu 1/4/2007 7:05 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: The World hates Barry, part 2731



Suggests only to deny.  Evidently the term had been in circulation for some time.

  JL

"Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Baker, John"
Subject: Re: The World hates Barry, part 2731
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So that's why shaggy dog story is still listed from 1946, with
origin unknown or uncertain. Fred Shapiro and I found a 1937 Esquire
article that discusses them and suggests that they take their name from
a prototype joke about a shaggy dog, see
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0303A&L=ADS-L&P=R1440&
I=-3.



John Baker0




-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Jesse Sheidlower
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 6:11 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: The World hates Barry, part 2731

Alert ADS-L'ers may have just caught me on All Things Considered talking
about the OED's new Balderdash & Piffle series, already mentioned here.
One of the terms on the to-be-antedated is _Bloody Mary_, which OED has
from 1956; Barry found a 1939 example in 2001. (It's the policy for this
series to go with OED2 dates, even when we have improvements in the
files already.)

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