mid-aughts

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/15/2007 05:23 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>Well, there was the proposal for the "Naughty Aughties", but I'm not
>sure we've lived up (or even down) to it.

Well, give us time; it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.  And I
suppose any designation will only take hold upon reflection, some
decades later.  After all, the phrase "Gay Nineties" didn't come into
use until ... the OED2 doesn't tell me when!  However, Wikipedia is
kinder: it asserts "The term itself began to be used in the 1920s and
is believed to have been created by the artist Richard V. Culter, who
first released a series of drawings in Life magazine entitled "the
Gay Nineties" and later published a book of drawings with the same
name."  (I'm sure someone on this list will know better and earlier, however.)

Joel

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