[Ads-l] Antedates for "Team X"?

[Laurence Horn]

> On Nov 17, 2019, at 5:45 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Ben Zimmer's "Word Routes" column indicates that "The general form of
> 'Team X' dates back to the 1970s at least", and he gives the example
> of "Team USA" in hockey.
> 
> https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/team-conan-the-latest-pop-culture-posse/
> 
> I executed a few searches to explore the distinctive ordering
> displayed in the schema "Team X". There are quite a few examples of
> "Red Team" and "Green Team" in the newspapers.com database, but it
> appears that instances of "Team Red" and "Team Green" are relatively
> uncommon. Below is a citation.
> 
> I recognize that "Team (Nation)", "Team (Person)", "Team (Character)",
> and "Team (Company)" differ from "Team (Color)”.

The key difference between these uses is that in the ones I had in mind or the metaphorical ones in Ben’s columns (“Team Rhys”, “Team Drunk-Crying-in-Public”, “Team Walt”, “Team Conan”, “Team Pam"), as opposed to the earlier uses with the inverted word order (“Team USA”, “Team Ferrari”, “Team Green”), there’s no literal team.  
> 
> Date: October 3, 1951
> Newspaper: The Record-Argus
> Newspaper Location: Greenville, Pennsylvania
> Article: Sports Notes
> Author: Bill Antill
> Quote Page 8, Column 3
> Database: Newspapers.com
> https://www.newspapers.com/image/12422587/
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> On paper, teams look good. On the field, they are disappointing.
> Teams that whip one opponent readily fail to defeat to elevens which
> were beaten by that same team. For instance, Team Green may wallop
> Team Red. Team Red licks Team White. Team White turns about and sets
> down Team Green. Records are deceptive.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> Here is an example circa 1928 (unverifed) of 'team "white"' and 'team
> "black"', Interestingly, the passage quickly reverts to "white team"
> and "black team".
> 
> Year: 1927 to 1929
> Periodical: The Classroom Teacher
> Volume 5
> Quote Page 111
> Database: Google Books snippet; metadata may be inaccurate; search for
> 1927 reveals a snippet specifying 1927 as the copyright year;
> HathiTrust matches show the year as 1928 and 1929
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> The players are seated, and one half of the room represents team
> "white" and the other half team "black." The leader has a large card
> which is white on one side and black on the other, and he tosses this
> card into the air so that it will fall on the teacher's desk. If the
> card falls with the white side up, the white team then tries to make
> the members of the black team laugh and one point is scored for the
> white team for every member of the black team who laughs.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> Garson
> 
> On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 12:16 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I’m referring to the use of “Team X” where X is a character in a TV series or (by extension?) in a book, in whom those who profess to be on the “team” have a rooting interest. See for example the end of this excerpt from “Cult of the Literary Sad Woman”, Leslie Jamison’s cover essay in this weekend’s NYTBR:
>> 
>> I needed blueprints for my epic sadness, and no one captured epic sadness as well as Jean Rhys, especially — and unapologetically — in her 1939 novel, “Good Morning, Midnight.” The novel’s antiheroine, Sasha, tries to drink herself to death in a cheap Paris hotel room — haunted by her lost youth, her botched romances and the ghost of her infant son, who died at 5 weeks old. As soon as I read the first scene, in which a stranger chides Sasha for crying at a bar (“Sometimes I’m just as unhappy as you are. But that’s not to say that I let everybody see it”), I knew which team I was on: Team Sasha, Team Rhys, Team Drunk-Crying-in-Public.
>> 
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/books/review/leslie-jamison-sylvia-plath-joan-didion-jean-rhys.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/books/review/leslie-jamison-sylvia-plath-joan-didion-jean-rhys.html>
>> 
>> I first remember coming across this use in blogs and reviews discussing Breaking Bad (“Team Walt”, “Team Jesse”, “Team Hank”, as in https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/1ie6hp/team_hank_or_team_walt/ <https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/1ie6hp/team_hank_or_team_walt/>) and similar popular series with (sorta) bad guys and (sorta) good guys demanding empathy, but I’m sure it’s popped up elsewhere on the web (and beyond).  Presumably its origin is a transference from “Team USA” and other sports contexts.  I don’t have access to the OED today for some reason, but I would be (pleasantly) surprised if there’s a relevant lemma there.  Maybe it’s been discussed by Ben and/or in Language Log posts.
>> 
>> Afterthought:
>> D’oh!  Of course it has been:  https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2043 <https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2043>
>> Anyway, nice work, Ben!  But I wonder if the extension to high(er), or at least older, culture is a new thing.  Team Rhett vs. Team Ashley? Team Jules vs. Team Jim? Team Edgar vs. Team Heathcliff?  Team Macbeth vs. Team Macduff? Team Hephaestus vs. Team Ares?  Team God vs. Team Satan?
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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