More on early txtng

[Ben Zimmer]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> At 2:20 PM -0400 8/19/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >At 8/19/2010 02:08 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>Sorry, it's 1832, "To Miss Catherine Jay, of Utica"
> >
> >Good enough to put down the British Library, being before their 1867.
> >
> Yup, by a generation. Back when I posted this in 2002, I was
> wondering if anyone else had other examples of alphanumeric
> proto-texting of the "b4" type from the early 19th c. but nobody
> responded.  Of course the quest is still open, and now the prize is
> to see by how many years we can antedate those Brits!  (It wouldn't
> surprise me if someone found other examples from the newspapers of
> the 1820s, when the "O.K." fad was in full flower.)

My latest Word Routes column takes this light-verse tradition back to
1828, but finds its origins in the UK, not the US. Our KTJ of UTK
(Katie Jay of Uticay) is trumped by their LNG of Q (Ellen Gee of Kew)
and MLE K of UL (Emily Kay of Ewell). Read all about it:

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2398/

Links therein:

"Dirge, to the Memory of Miss Ellen Gee of Kew" (New Monthly Magazine, 1828)
http://books.google.com/books?id=TScAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA360

"Elegy to the Memory of Miss Emily Kay (Cousin to Miss Ellen Gee of
Kew)" (New Monthly Magazine, 1828)
http://books.google.com/books?id=TScAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA452

Horace Smith's version of "Elegy" (The Midsummer Medley for 1830)
http://books.google.com/books?id=hDJIAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA226

"To Miss Catharine Jay of Utica" (Atkinson's Casket, 1832)
http://books.google.com/books?id=SpfPAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA3-PA480

The 1828 "Elegy" can be found several times in the Early American
Newspapers database, so it's very likely that it helped kickstart the
American initialism-play fad of the 1830s.

--bgz


--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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