The Telegraph and the OED

[Garson O'Toole]

The Hudson Chronicle of May 7, 1859 contains the poem (ack N.Y.
Evening Post) on the front page in column 6 in NewspaperArchive. The
search word "underdog" finds the instance, but the image scan actually
shows the existence of a space: "under dog". (Note there are earlier
instances in 1859 of the term and the poem.)

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Michael Quinion
<wordseditor at worldwidewords.org> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Michael Quinion <wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG>
> Organization: World Wide Words
> Subject:      Re: The Telegraph and the OED
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Fred Shapiro wrote:
>
>> The Yale Book of Quotations seems to believe that David Barker's 1859
>> poem about "the under dog in the fight" is the origin of "underdog."  Is
>> the Hudson Chronicle of Wisconsin occurrence that poem?  What database
>> did you get the Hudson Chronicle occurrence from?
>
> I know it was newspaperarchive I searched, but searching again doesn't
> throw up a result (and I didn't keep a copy). I would not have thought the
> original result was from the poem (I would have recognised it, surely),
> but having browsed NPA's papers, it must have been the issue of 7 May
> 1859, in which the only hit is from the poem. Colour me confused ...
>
> --
> Michael Quinion
> Editor, World Wide Words
> Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org
>
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