[Ads-l] Article on "Preppy," "Jock," and "Wonk"

[Laurence Horn]

On Nov 8, 2014, at 10:16 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:

> In the November/December 2014 issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, my regular column treats the origin of the words "preppy," "jock," and "wonk":
> 
> http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/3988/preppy-jock-and-wonk
> 
> In this column I discuss my long-standing theory that the three words all originated in a tripartite classification of Harvard students, although I have now found that the earliest evidence for "jock" comes from Princeton instead of Harvard.
> 
> I have posted most of the citations in this column previously on ADS-L, but one point I have not yet made on this list is that the earliest citation for "preppy," which I previously sourced to the Yale Daily News, Nov. 24, 1951, actually turns out not to be an issue of the Yale Daily News, but rather to be a parody of the YDN produced by the Harvard Crimson.
> 
Ah yes, those parodies on the eve (or day) of "The Game".  If memory serves, that year it ended in a tie, not to be confused with the infamous tie in 1968 immortalized as "Harvard beats Yale 29-29", in the subsequent Crimson headline and the eponymous documentary. 

LH 

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