Further Antedating of "Sex Appeal"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Fred, are you sure this is exactly the usual sense?  It could mean (believe it or not) "interest for one sex, especially women, and not the other."

  The reason I suggest this is that if the date is correct, 1910 seems very early to me for unapologetic discussion of the naughty kind of "sex appeal," i.e., "some degree of eroticism."

  JL

Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Fred Shapiro
Subject: Further Antedating of "Sex Appeal"
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sex appeal (OED 1924)

1910 _Current Literature_ July (American Periodical Series) The play
which contains no sex appeal is described by professional critics as being
"undramatic" or "not a play at all."

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro Editor
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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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