"cliff-hanger"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/20/2014 02:52 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>"The Capt. Dying------ [The Remainder of this Melancholy Relation will be
>continued, in our Next]"
>
>So, the cliff-hanger was invented as early as 1739?
>
>GAT

Yes.  I suspect earlier.  I'll ask the 18th-century email list; my
first thought is one might look into _Tristram Shandy_.  But the
English vocabulary didn't catch up until the 1930s (see OED2).

Joel



>On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 2:02 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> >  At 1/20/2014 12:35 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> > "Random House...Kryptonite...Oxford...!! Getting...weaker!!!  If I
> > could only --"
> >
> > END OF PT. I !!!!!
> >
> > Next Month: "Fortress of Solitude!"
> >
> >
> > Not bad for keeping us in suspense; I can hear the suspiration (or was
> > that "aspiration"?).  In 1739 the first part of a two-part article on a
> > newsworthy shipwreck off Nova Scotia (in which the ship owner's wife was
> > widowed, carried off by Indians, and then rescued by the French, and was
> > supposed to have had about 1600 pounds sterling in gold, silver, and jewels
> > that was taken by the Indians) ended with:
> >
> > "The Capt. Dying------ [The Remainder of this Melancholy Relation will be
> > continued, in our Next]"
> >
> > (The woman carried off and then rescued was actually a piratical
> > murderess, who was being transported to America for previous felonies.)
> >
> > Joel
> > ------------------------------------------------------------ The American
> > Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>
>
>--
>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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org