"Stuffing" the Ballot Boxes
George Thompson
george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Thu Aug 1 23:31:10 UTC 2013
The OED should be getting close to "stuff", verb, in its revising. Here's
a tidbit:
Arrest of an Election Inspector for "Stuffing" the Ballot Boxes.
[headline]
New York Morning Express, December 7, 1859, p. 4, col. 3
OED:
8.d. *U.S.* ‘To put fraudulent votes into (a ballot-box)’ (W. 1911).
1872 M. Schele de Vere
*Americanisms<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2511/view/Entry/192092?rskey=JFK9tQ&result=1>
* 272.
1906 *Q. Rev.<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2511/view/Entry/192092?rskey=JFK9tQ&result=1>
* July 283 The interval had been devoted to stuffing the ballot-boxes.
Note that this is a free-range "stuffing", not one cage-reared by a
lexicographer.
(I can't figure out how to get rid of the cockamamie spacing between the
lines.)
GAT
--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list