Coinage of "Carjacking"
Shapiro, Fred
fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Sat Aug 18 16:05:30 UTC 2012
Wikipedia states: "The term was coined by reporter Scott Bowles and EJ Mitchell, an editor with The Detroit News<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Detroit_News>. The News first used the term in an August 28, 1991 report on the murder of Ruth Wahl, a 22-year-old Detroit drugstore cashier who was killed when she would not surrender her Suzuki Sidekick<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Sidekick>, and in an investigative report examining the rash of what police called at the time "robbery armed unlawful driving away an automobile", plaguing Detroit."
This usage is a few days earlier than the earliest citation in OED.
Fred Shapiro
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carjacking#cite_note-1>
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list