[Ads-l] Antedating of "The Establishment"

[Martin Kaminer]

Curiously this topic is the major focus of Henry Fairlie's wikipedia page,
written by the legendary/infamous Philip Cross.

On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 8:32 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Antedating of "The Establishment"
>
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> The OED's first use for _establishment_, 8.b., is dated 1923.  This is the
> =
> sense: "a social group exercising power generally, or within a given field
> =
> or institution, by virtue of its traditional superiority, and by the use
> es=
> p. of tacit understandings and often a common mode of speech, and having
> as=
>  a general interest the maintenance of the status quo."  The OED entry
> iden=
> tifies a 1955 article by Henry Fairlie as the locus classicus of this
> sense=
> .
>
>
> Fairlie himself later (in the New Yorker, 19 Oct. 1968) traced use of "the
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> establishment" in this sense to a 9 Dec. 1841 lecture by Ralph Waldo
> Emerso=
> n, titled "The Conservative."
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>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
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