[Ads-l] Further Antedating of "Preppy"

[Wilson Gray]

> On Oct 26, 2019, at 9:20 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
wrote:
>
> True, true.
>
> But with billions and zillions of printed words available, many of them
> written by former preppies, how is it that the word has been statistically
> almost nonexistent for most of its lifetime?
>
> Beats me.
>
> JL

That's both undeniable and inexplicable, I admit. Indeed, I recall that,
During The War, there was even a prep-school comic-book hero - *not* Frank
Merriwell - whose name has been on the tip of my tongue since this thread
began. Like Frank, this guy had no superpowers. He was just twice as good
as anybody else.

Dick Cole! He was a cadet at the Farr Military Academy, not, strictly
speaking, a prep school, but close enough for government work.
http://www.toonopedia.com/dickcole.htm

BTW, thanks to Yalie Frank Merriwell, "Boola Boola" was one of my favorite
tunes. On the radio program, Frank's dad always sang the song as he drove
the fam to the Harvard-Yale game.

Candidate for POTY:
> Maybe it was existent all those years—but inChoate.




On Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 9:21 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> True, true.
>
> But with billions and zillions of printed words available, many of them
> written by former preppies, how is it that the word has been statistically
> almost nonexistent for most of its lifetime?
>
> Beats me.
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 11:35 PM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > "Preppy" doesn't even have the excuse of having being thought coarse or
> > > unprintable.
> >
> > True, but it's also not a word that would have fallen trippingly from the
> > tongues of the lower orders. I thought that _Choate_ was pronounced
> > "Cho-ate," until I became a buddy of a Yalie who was a Choate grad while
> I
> > was serving in the Army Security Agency. Even when the preppy style of
> > dress became popular among the plebs, it was known as "Ivy League" and
> not
> > as "preppy."
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 5:03 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Maybe I've said this before, but what is most interesting in such cases
> > is
> > > not the remarkable age of the term, but the fact that decades (in this
> > > case, many decades) evidently had to elapse before it entered common
> > > currency.
> > >
> > > "Preppy" doesn't even have the excuse of having being thought coarse or
> > > unprintable.
> > >
> > > JL
> > >
> > > On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 2:31 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > I have previously antedated the noun "preppy" (formerly having a 1956
> > > > first use citation in the OED) back to 1928.  Here is a much earlier
> > > cite:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > preppy, n. (OED 1928)
> > > >
> > > > 1880 _Occident_ (Colorado College newspaper) 1 Apr. 17/1 (Elephind)
> > Now
> > > > the thirsty preppie goes to the hydrant, faint and far; he drinks
> > > directly
> > > > from its notes, or takes a Leyden-jar.
> > > >
> > > > Fred Shapiro
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> > truth."
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > -Wilson
> > -----
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -Mark Twain
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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