Negative Nancies and other related musings

[Alice Faber]

On 3/20/10 3:03 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> Negative Nancies made the WaPo today--it has already been in The New
> Republic ( http://bit.ly/dp1rRe ) since January.
>
> http://bit.ly/9hNz4p
>> Various Negative Nancys spent Thursday puzzling over what ABC News was
>> thinking by hiring someone outside the box, with little knowledge of
>> domestic politics, to anchor "This Week." Amanpour, who grew up in
>> Iran and Britain, the daughter of an Iranian father and a British
>> mother, will be the first broadcast TV Sunday Beltway show anchor with
>> a distinctly non-American accent, they said. Some suggested the
>> decision was foisted upon the news division by its Disneyland bosses
>> (ABC is owned by Disney).
>
> [I included the whole graf for other language-related bits.]
>
>
> UD has "Negative Nancies" going back to 2003. Wiktionary has it back to
> 2001. UD also has Nosy Nancy, but neither has Nosy Nellie or Negative
> Nellie. I tried several searches, but the most realistic result I got
> was {Negative-Nancies | Negative-Nancy}, which gave me about 43000 raw
> ghits. Doing the two separately gave over a million for one and over
> half a million for the other--which is just unrealistic. [I just re-ran
> the paired search and got 44500, then put in quotation marks for each
> and got 45700] There are 16 current news hits, including Salon, Daily
> Newarker (NJ) and a bunch of blogs, but neither WaPo nor The New
> Republic show up.
>
> GNA is another matter. The earliest legitimate hit is from the Richmond
> Times - Dispatch (Jul 29, 1994--in PQ)
> IT'S YOUR ATTITUDE AND YOUR LIFE
>> But before you decide to be a positive person or what she calls a
>> Negative Nancy, you should know that other people can feel your energy.
>
> The earliest readable copy of the phrase turns out to be the name of a
> goth band, which signifies something about the distribution of the
> phrase, but does not attest to it directly.
> http://bit.ly/cNo1Bi
>
> Of course, it also shows up on South Park (apparently, Season 6 Episode
> 8, June 26, 2002).
>
> http://bit.ly/dvAq1R
>> Cartman: Okay Kyle, you're being a Negative Nancy. Stop it. Okay
>> unless you wan't everyone to call you Negative Nancy from now on.
>
> The earliest GB hits are from 2001: http://bit.ly/cZgCVK
>
> I've never heard "Negative Nellie" but it's widely attested. On the
> other hand "Nos(e)y Nellie" is quite common.

"Nervous Nellie" is the phrase that comes to mind. Google reveals
citations as early as the 1920s but I can't figure out how to sort the
list to find the oldest.
--
 =======================================================================
Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                            tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                               fax (203) 865-8963

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