Horne

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Feb 3, 2008 1:01 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, to tell it like it T-I-tis, they both seem fairly trivial to me.
> I prefer Major. Either I already know the term because everybody knew
> it or I think that he's wrong or the term, if it existed, was peculiar
> to New York and I have no opinion.
[snip]

Just in case there's any confusion, Wilson is responding to these two
articles by Eliot Horne (which I emailed him):

"For Cool Cats and Far-Out Chicks", NYT Sunday Magazine, Aug. 18, 1957, p. 14
"The Words for the Music", NYT Sunday Magazine, June 25, 1961, p. 39

Is Horne's 1963 _Hiptionary_, which these word-lists presumably fed
into, known to anyone here? It doesn't show up as cited in the OED, so
that doesn't bode well for its  potential for antedating and such.
Still, the "good lookin' out" in the 1961 piece is the earliest I've
seen in print (though Wilson recalls it from the '50s).


--Ben Zimmer

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