[Ads-l] Fw: "Show-girl" 1750, probably antedating OED2 1836--; "middling" 1750 minor antedating

[Joel Berson]

John Dussinger (or Betty Rizzo) has turned up "show-girl", from 1750, which if it doesn't antedate OED2 sense 1.a, "An actress whose role is decorative rather than histrionic", 1836--, surely is related.  A bit more context will help pin up the group in which Miss Peggy Banks includes herself.

The quotation also antedates OED3 "middling", n.1, sense 3, "With the. People of moderate means; middle-class people", 1751--.  Interestingly, the 1751 quotation is also from Richardson (Clarissa).


Joel

   

 ----- Forwarded Message -----
  From: "Dussinger, John A" <dussinge at ILLINOIS.EDU>
 To: C18-L at LISTS.PSU.EDU 
 Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2015 9:31 AM
 Subject: [C18-L] "Show girls" in 1750
   
 #yiv4363077865 P {margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;}Richardson to Sarah Wescomb
Monday 6 August 1750


“I am delighted with all you write in relation to the two Misses Gunnings. These poor Girls seem too much in haste to make their Fortunes, to catch their Fish. . . .  What Business have these Girls to flutter about in High Life, when they have not either Sense or Fortune to become the middling? 'We Shew-Girls,' said Miss Peggy Banks, 'never get Husbands.'”

_The Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of Samuel Richardson: Correspondence with Sarah Wescomb, Frances Grainger, and Laetitia Pilkington_, ed. John A. Dussinger (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015), pp. 181-82.
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I recall that the late Betty Rizzo was astonished to see this term in use this early in cultural history.

JAD



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