year as adjective

[Jonathan Lighter]

Arnold's unremarkable syntax from the "Chicano" thread:

"the first OED2 cite, from 1947 Arizona, is somewhat disparaging in tone."

In case some young folks don't realize it, this journalistic use of a
year-date as an adjective is pretty "new" - if you know what I mean.

Having read more than seven zillion words of English beginning with, let's
say, Shakespeare, I assure everyone that the construction "year-date
according to the Gregorian calendar + NP" did not exist before the 20th C.,
and if you want my two cents about it, probably didn't appear until (I'll
go out on a limb) the late '60s. Or even a little later.

We dinos would have said "from Arizona in 1947" or "from Arizona, 1947."
Conceivably it developed from the journalist's obsession to save space via
the saturation of the brainosphere with phrases like "The new 1957
Thunderbird!" and "The unstoppable 1961 New York Yankees!"

In pre-1970 pop ontology the Gregorian year was not recognized as an
attribute of anything else. Now it is. A new era in thought.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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