[Ads-l] Get one's goat

Wed Dec 3 15:26:09 UTC 2014

Michael: Thanks for your note. After I posting the Kid McCoy article
with the December 5, 1903 date I posted a follow-up message indicating
that the date given by the NewspaperArchive database was probably
incorrect.

The database presents a date of December 5, 1903 and a page number of
25. If one jumps to the front page and examines it then the date looks
fine: December 5, 1903. However, if one examines the previous page the
date looks like December 5, 1908. Also, if one examines the page
before that, the date looks like December 7, 1908. The numerals "3"
and "8" are sometimes confused in newspaper databases. Because of this
mixture of dates I do not trust the accuracy of the 1903 date.

I apologize for the misunderstanding. Here is the warning message I
posted on the the thread.

[Begin old message]
Warning: The date given by the NewspaperArchive database for the Kid
McCoy article is probably incorrect. The page with the article is not
dated, so I examined adjacent pages and found the date December 7,
1908. That is probably the correct date. So the article I posted does
not antedate the known cites.
[End old message]

Garson

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 9:15 AM, Michael Quinion
<michael.quinion at worldwidewords.org> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Michael Quinion <michael.quinion at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG>
> Organization: World Wide Words
> Subject:      Get one's goat
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thanks to Garson O'Toole for the 1903 citation, to to others for prompting
> me to update my piece about the idiom, which is at bit.ly/1FNUlko .
>
> In it, I note there a widely circulated joke from the 1880s that uses "get
> my goats", which may have some bearing on the origin of the expression.
> Your comments are welcomed.
>
> --
> Michael Quinion
> World Wide Words
> Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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