[Ads-l] Origin of the term "Cry Wolof"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 01:59:27PM -0400, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>>
>> I believe Larry gets credit -- he used it in an ADS-L post on Dec. 6, 2004:
>>
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2004-December/043326.html
>>
>> Then Jesse popularized it in his Slate piece published two days later:
>>
>> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2004/12/crying_wolof.html
>
> Hmm. I'm rather sure that in the original piece, I explicitly gave
> credit to Larry (perhaps in the author-bio section), but that seems to
> have been removed. The oldest version on the Wayback Machine doesn't
> show this credit, though.
>
> But in any case, since it doesn't show this on Slate, I will say here
> that yes, I got the expression from Larry.

Yes, I remember that credit -- and the Wayback Machine did save it after all:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050911185519/http://www.slate.com/id/2110811/

"Jesse Sheidlower is editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary.
He thanks Yale linguist Laurence Horn for coining the phrase 'crying
Wolof.'"

--bgz

-- 
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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