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>

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