1961 article on teen slang

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>:

>> On 9/14/07, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>
>> The following article by Gay Pauley, UPI women's editor, appeared in
>> various newspapers in December 1961.
> [....]
> On 9/14/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Back in the 'Fifties, we used to say: "Take it easy, greasy. There's a
>> fungus among us," rhyming "among us" with "fungus."
>
> On 9/14/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> HDAS has a "fungus among us" from ca1960, with plain old "fungus" some
>> decades earlier.
>
> The earliest I've seen for "there's a fungus among us" is 1957, in
> another teen slang article I posted here:
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509A&L=ADS-L&P=R43
> [....]

According to Google Books the 1940 book Reading to Others By Argus John
Tresidder (Scott, Foresman and Company) p. 415 includes the words:
... angling, clanging; inger, wringer; mingler, gingham; English, kingly;
dangling, winging; fungus, among us; hunger, hung her; anger, haranguer; ...

Stephen

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