Adidas -- All Day I dream about . . . (UNCLASSIFIED)

Fri Apr 11 19:45:47 UTC 2014

Neal Whitman wrote:
> I heard this from my cousin back in 1979 or 1980, when
> we visited them at their lake house in North Carolina.
> He held up his Adidas t-shirt for me and said it. I also
> posted about it here a few years ago when the subject
> of backronyms came up, but can't easily search for it right now.

Bill Mullins wrote back on June 14, 2010:
> The Adidas sex "acronym" goes at least back to
> 1975, in my elementary school.

Excellent memory, Neal and Bill. Here is some evidence provided by an
instance of the backronym in 1980.

Date: Sept 30, 1980
Newspaper: The Milwaukee Sentinel
Article: Alex Thien: Newlyweds Cooking Up A Crock Of Pickles
Part 3: Page 1,
Newspaper Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Database: Google News Archive

[Begin excerpt]
JACK CUMMINGS reports that for a long time he thought Adidas meant a
brand of jogging footwear, but his son, Jamie, 9, told him what it
really means, to wit: All Day I Dream About Sex.
[End excerpt]

Garson

>> On Apr 11, 2014, at 1:40 PM, "Mullins, Bill CIV (US)" <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL> wrote:
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill CIV (US)" <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL>
>> Subject:      Adidas -- All Day I dream about . . .  (UNCLASSIFIED)
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
>>
>> Barry Popik recently posted on the backronym:  Adidas = All Day I Dream About Sex/Soccer/Sports, taking it back to 1993.
>> http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/all_day_i_dream_about_sports/
>>
>> From Newsbank:
>>
>> The Dallas Morning News - Tuesday, April 28, 1987 p 1b
>>
>> "To me, it's better to win and hurt a little, than lose and hurt a lot,' says Crenshaw, who has written 'all day I dream about state' vertically from each letter in the word Adidas on his cleats."
>>
>>
>> St. Petersburg Times - Tuesday, August 23, 1988 p 4
>>
>> " "It seems like I've always loved soccer," she said.  When she was 8 years old, Tina wrote a letter to adidas telling the company just how much. She wrote a letter using each of the letters to spell out a message: "All Day I Dream About Soccer." "
>>
>> USA TODAY - Tuesday, May 16, 1989 p 1d
>> " For instance, everywhere he goes, he asks kids if they know a double meaning for the sneaker name Adidas - and everywhere he goes, the kids know it means "All day I dream about sex." "
>>
>>
>>
>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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