"mint drop"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/27/2010 09:50 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>For "mint drop" (= gold coin) HDAS has 1835, 1836, 1837, &c.,
>starting with Nathaniel Hawthorne, that slangy rascal.

OED has 1788 for "mint drop".  And I am distressed  :-)  by what I
suspect is an ironic slur on the author my major project is examining
-- he used "salt" = 'experienced sailor' 5 years before R.H. Dana,
currently the earliest cite in the OED.

Joel

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