"Nor'easter" -- missing definition? and an antedating

[Jonathan Lighter]

Well, there are winds and there are winds, but my impression is that a
"nor'easter," by definition, is a strong one and thus the word's extension
to include, even designate, the frequently following storm of rain, sleet,
etc.

However, a "brisk nor'ester" is merely, well, brisk. OED needs to tweak its
definition.

JL





On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "Nor'easter" -- missing definition? and an antedating
>
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>
> 1)  What is a "Northeaster"?  The OED, as of last month, claims that
> it is merely "A wind blowing from the north-east" (or, very rarely,
> "A waterproof hat or cap").  I say a nor'easter is also, these days,
> a *storm* whose winds come from the northeast (and, as Ben Franklin
> deduced, which arrives from the southwest).  As in "the nor'easter
> dumped 6 inches of snow on Boston yesterday".
>
> What say all ye other Northeasterners?
>
> 2)  Google Books turns up 205 instances of "northeaster storm",
> claiming the earliest to be from 1889, in The Magazine of American
> history with notes and queries, Volume 21 - Page 209 (full view; this
> quotation is from No. 3, March, 1889 [see page 177]):
>
> "Many years later, and about the year A.D. 1000, another northeaster
> storm caught a son of this Erik and hurried him past some islands far
> off in the farther southwest, that had not gone under in the
> catastrophe of Atlantis."
>
> One could, I suppose, take this and perhaps other "northeaster"s in
> "northeaster storm" to mean merely "its winds came from the northeast".
>
> 3)  But what did Samuel Griswold Goodrich mean by the following
> sentence in his 1836 "new edition, carefully adapted to youth", of
> _Robinson Crusoe_?   "After passing the line, being in about 7
> degrees 22 minutes north latitude, a violent tornado or hurricane,
> which settled into a regular nor'easter, ..." -- a storm, or a
> wind?  The OED concedes that tornados and hurricanes are storms; I
> think by "nor'easter" Goodrich also meant a storm.
>
> 4)  The OED, as of last month, has 1770 as its earliest citation  for the
> wind.
>
>  From 1753: Boston Post-Boy; Date: Nov 12, 1753; Issue: 984; Page: 2/1:
>
> "Cap. Savage had a strong North-Easter some Hours before, about 8
> Leagues S. W. of the Cape [Florida], in which he carried away his
> Boltsprit, but happily recover'd it again."
>
> Joel
>
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