[Ads-l] "underdog" redux

[Ben Zimmer]

My Wall St. Journal column this week is on the word "underdog" in honor of
the Philadelphia Eagles.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/underdogs-beyond-the-super-bowl-how-the-word-got-started-1516983394

If paywalled, try accessing the column from my Twitter link:

https://twitter.com/bgzimmer/status/956934354965553152

I give credit to Fred Shapiro for discovering the origins of "underdog" in
the 1859 poem by David Barker, "The Under Dog in the Fight," as noted in
the Yale Book of Quotations. The poem was reprinted in many newspapers that
year, but here is where it first appeared:

New York Evening Post, Apr. 4, 1859, p. 1, col. 2
http://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83030384/1859-04-04/ed-1/seq-1.pdf

(I don't think this cite has been shared before.)

--bgz

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