"Clunker" not in OED?

[Joel S. Berson]

Well, now on-list instead of just to Fred.  (And how could I ever
have overlooked "cash for clunkers"?)

The following, alleged by GBooks/Snippet to be 1926 (English Journal,
vol. 15), is I suspect correctly dated (the English Journal
apparently started in 1912):

"bluffer when he finds among the questions that general type to which
even the class Clunker may attempt a satisfactory reply; it begins
like this: "Describe the wreck of the "; "Name several
characteristics of "; or "Trace the general ... "

This may be a person as the "thing that is worthless, inferior,
unsuccessful, etc." (the class dunce?).  But more context would help,
and why "Clunker" is capitalized I can't guess.

If this is indeed earlier than "clunker" as "a machine that clunks",
does that say anything about the etymology?

And by the way, the OED's definition of "clunk, noun" (and thus also
its definition of the verb) lacks the sound(s) made by clunker cars
or machines:  it has only "Sc.  A sound such as is made by a cork
drawn forcibly from a bottle, by liquid poured out of a narrow-necked
vessel, or shaken in a vessel partially empty, etc."!

Joel

At 2/19/2011 03:34 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 3:22 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> >
> > Joel has pointed out a significant omission in OED.  HDAS has _clunker_
> > with a 1942 first use.  I see a 1938 citation in Newspaperarchive, but I'll
> > look some more before posting details.
>
>I wrote about the automotive type of "clunker" (and "junker") in a
>May 2009 Word
>Routes column, with cites back to 1936.
>
>http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1849/
>
>And then on ADS-L I posted a 1933 cite for "klunker":
>
>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0905B&L=ADS-L&P=15845
>
>--bgz
>
>--
>Ben Zimmer
>http://benzimmer.com/
>
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