Green collar

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Oct 16, 2008, at 7:56 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Green collar
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:16 AM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com
> > wrote:
>>
>> In tonight's Washington State gubernatorial debate, Christine
>> Gregoire
>> slipped the expression "green collar" into one of her responses,
>> referring to people who work in green industries. "Green collar
>> worker" gets just over 6000 Googits.
>>
>> Because the presidential debate had a strong focus on a new-energy
>> economy, I thought the word would have been more useful for Obama or
>> McCain to use. BB
>
> I believe "green-collar" came up in our '07 WOTY discussion about
> "green-" as a combining form (which won the Most Useful category and
> came in 2nd to "subprime" in the overall voting). Word Spy dates it to
> 1984:
>
> http://www.wordspy.com/words/dirty-white-collar.asp
>
>
I couldn't find it in the archives, FWIW. BB

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