[Ads-l] Go postal

[victor steinbok]

I tried searching for "go postal" in a variety of settings. OED has it from
1993, which is earlier than many secondary sources suggest, pointing to a
January, 1994, conference on workplace violence, in DC, sponsored by USPS.
I remember the expression as being much earlier, before I was in Berkeley
(1990-1992), and the several post office shootings in the 1980s that led to
the expression were much more likely to be the vector, if not the origin.
So the conference-as-source/vector is bunk.

But this is the earliest I could find:

https://goo.gl/9svvQ5

The source is Les Roberts novel A Carol for Cleveland, which GB dates as
1991. Indeed, Amazon record gives the publication date as October 1, 1991.

VS-)

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