"snap"

[Mark Mandel]

Google Book search turns up one apparent antedate (asterisks for italics):

>>>
Oh! *snap!* the snubbing little beast! He couldn't have said worse! Pulley
*is* in a passion, Satters is sorry he spoke, he'll take good care next
time!
<<<

The Childermass (p.82)
By Wyndham Lewis
Published by Covici, Friede, 1928
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized Jun 27, 2006
322 pages
http://books.google.com/books?id=QuANAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1

My wife, a librarian with a long exposure to children's and young adult
books, says that she's seen it in older British books but with a very
different usage, analogous to the "bread and butter!" of our childhood, used
when two people say the same thing simultaneously. (Among children only?)
This would seem unrelated.


Mark Mandel

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org