wild about Rappaccini's daughter

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has "wild," 11.c, from Jane Austen "a1817."  Yet it lacks any U.S. exx. (as far as I can tell) and has no ex. constr. with "about" till 1868.  Tsk.

  1844 Nathaniel Hawthorne in _The United States Democratic Review_  (Dec.) 549: You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men in Padua are wild about.

  JL


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