[Ads-l] baby face and heel

[MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US)]

The June updates to the OED include "baby face" and "heel", terms from pro wrestling meaning "good guy" and "villain", respectively.
Baby face (often shortened to "face") is 1954, and heel is 1958 (although the term is included in the 1954 quotation under "baby face".


Muncie IN _Star Press_ 14 Nov 1952 p 36 col 3

"Buddy (Nature Boy) Rogers, that prince of heels, won the main event of Prof. M. J. Cleary's weekly wrestling presentation Thursday night at the armory.  On two occasions he pressed to the canvas the shoulders of George Drake, a somewhat violent young man who has been heeling it here lately but who, when pitted against that rascal Rogers, was discovered to be a baby-face and as such was taken to the bosoms of the very customers who denounced him one week before."

Note the verb use of "heeling".

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