"can of corn"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Re: "Burt L. Standish"

I found a recent paperback copy of a Standish-Merriwell in a used bookstore
in the '70s.

Wow! It had more antedatings than any book I'd ever seen! Of course it was
still set in the 1890s and had the original pub date on display.

My naivete soon became clear. A 1960s reviser had updated  the '90s lingo
to make it more interesting and readable for today's youth.

Turns out the whole series of "reprints" was like that.

A few years ago, my wife found a recent reprint of a book she'd liked in
grade-school, one of the "Elsie Dinsmore" series by Martha Finley.

Same title and everything. Same setting in the nostalgic past.

You can imagine her horror when she found it to be completely modernized
and heavily Christianized too.

The various newspaper DBs I can access all cite "can of corn" from the same
1937 journalistic list of baseball slang. I haven't noticed anything
earlier.

Those grocers' poles with the rubber-tipped clasp at the end were indeed
"neat" (as we used to say).

JL


On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 11:40 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "can of corn"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 21, 2014, at 11:22 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
>
> > Jonathan Lighter  wrote:
> >> See HDAS I, p. 358.
> >>=20
> >> I have heard it only in reference to baseball.
> >>=20
> >> Used by whom in 1896?
> >=20
> > HDAS has a 1937 citation. "The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (Third
> > Edition)" lists a 1930 first use citation for "can of corn" in the Los
> > Angeles Times. Here is the metadata and an extended excerpt from
> > ProQuest. This instance does not really correspond to an easily caught
> > high fly ball:
> >=20
> > Newspaper: Los Angeles Times
> > Newspaper location: Los Angeles, California
> > Date: 1930 June 19
> > Title: Hill Shines as Hollywood Wins, 6 to 4: RUMLER'S POKE SETTLES =
> CLASH
> > Continuation title: Sheiks Thump Mission Reds
> > Author: Bob Ray
> > Start Page 11
> > Quote Page 13, Column 4 (continuation page number listed in article)
> > Database ProQuest
> >=20
> > [Begin except]
> > Ike Boone, the league's leading hitter, again went hitless, which
> > makes it a big seven for, oh,
>
> > as far as the present series is
> > concerned.
>
>
> wonder when "go 7 for 0" (in the game, or series) changed to "go 0 for =
> 7"
>
> > [=85]
>
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>



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