[Ads-l] "blighted" and "blight" applied to an urban area

[GEOFFREY NUNBERG]

The first OED cites for both words are from Lewis Mumford in 1938. The terms were in use well before that. Cf “The Problem of the Blighted District,” by Randolph Coolidge,  Proceedings of the Fourth National Conference on City Planning, Boston, Massachusetts: May 27-29, 1912; “A blighted distrinct tends to become an unsanitary district, and where the blight goes far enough in time it may even become a slum district.” My guess is that a little digging would turn out earlier examples.

Geoff
 
Geoffrey Nunberg
School of Information
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720

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