speed humps

Garson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Mon May 2 14:32:22 UTC 2011


OED has a non-bracketed cite in 1974. Here is an instance of "speed
hump" in 1966. The "h" is reasonably well defined in the newspaper
image, so I think this is a  "speed hump" and not a "speed bump".

Cite: 1966 May 19, Reading Eagle, Mothers Form Human Barricade, Page
16, Reading, Pennsylvania. (Google News archive)

Mrs. J. Patrick Sullivan, spokesman for the group, said they want
speed humps, "Watch for Children" signs and police protection against
speeding autos and drag racers.

http://goo.gl/UrSRO

Speed hump appears in the hydrodynamics literature earlier with a
distinct sense I believe.
Garson

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 9:02 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: speed humps
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I do recall that earlier discussion, but I've still never seen a sign
> with that warning.  My first reaction was that after screaming at us
> all those years about how "SPEED KILLS", speed was trying a Make Love
> Not War strategy.
>
> LH

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