[Ads-l] "snow farm", not in OED; 1970--? Bostonism?

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 11:33 AM, Geoffrey Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>
wrote:

> There are, of course, 'server farms' and 'cube farms' already, so it may
> well be on its way to productivity.


And "_tank_ farm" goes back to at least 1888:

Light, Heat, and Power - Volumes 4-5 - Page 137
https://books.google.com/books?id=EwAgAQAAMAAJ
1888 - ‎Read
To give an idea of the production of Wood County oil, we will state that
the Standard Oil Company now has forty-three 35,000-barrel oil tanks
completed in this county and is building others at the rate of two a week.
Seventy-five of these monster tanks will be located between Cygnet and Oil
Centre on what is known as the _Tank Farm_. And _every one_ of these _tanks
are_ full of oil, and as fast as new ones are completed they too are
filled, and even then only about one-quarter of the oil that can be
produced from the wells is taken.

Note also an early(?) instance of a verb that should be singular attracted
into the plural by the plural noun immediately preceding it.

FWIW, a location containing any number of tanks larger than one constitutes
a "tank farm" at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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