[Ads-l] "Number" in reference to songs or clothing; similar patterns with "outfit" and "kit".

[Stanton McCandlish]

"Number" to mean 'song' (from an album or from a longer live performance)
or 'item of clothing' (especially a dress or other main piece) may to have
its origins in serial publication.  I seem to recall some semi-recent
discussion of this term on the list (I think in the context of "did one of
those numbers", in describing actions or expressions, a usage which seems
to descend from the musical sense), so I'm not sure how well this has been
looked into already.  I was going through an old issue of *The
International Studio* (Oct. 1913), and noticed an advertisement for a
separate issue one could order, which was termed a "special number", and in
later prose "the Special Spring Number of 'The Studio'".  Thinking back,
I've see *The Studio* and *The International Studio* use this expression at
least as early as the 1890s, though I liquidated the issues I had that were
that old, last year, so I don't have one on hand to cite more directly.
Still, might be worth looking in even older magazines, such as the original
*Punch* from the Victorian era.  Google Books, Internet Archive, and
Project Gutenberg probably have a bunch of them scanned.  At least as early
as the 1910s, "number" seems to have had a more general meaning along the
lines of 'particular issuance/instance in a longer/larger series/set of
things'.

Lexico.com (ex- OxfordDictionaries.com) has a definition for "number" of 'a
single issue of a magazine', and it's labeled British but without any
indication of currency or age of origin. It gives the 'song' meaning and
the 'clothing item' meaning ("a little black number") as senses under the
publishing one, so OUP at least seem to suggest such an etymologically
hereditary relationship in the term's trajectory.  It's odd to me that the
'magazine issue' sense is not common in the US but the 'song' and 'item of
clothing' ones are.  *The International Studio* isn't very good evidence of
American usage of the possibly-original sense, since it tended to re-print
material verbatim from the original British edition, *The Studio*.

Interestingly, while looking through some issues of *The Burr McIntosh
Monthly* (New York) I ran across, in the July 1909 issue, a seemingly
related usage: the term "outfit" to refer not to 'set of clothing' but to a
general 'set of things' (in this case, a crafting supplies kit).  This
seems suggestive of the British usage of "kit" to mean 'clothes', which
also used to occur in US English (perhaps Southern or military, or both;
the semi-surviving phrase "kit gun", for example, means 'a small pistol one
can easily conceal', and has nothing to do with building the firearm from
parts).  I think we're seeing generic "number", "outfit", and "kit" all
shifting to refer to clothing more narrowly.

Neither "outfit" nor "kit" ever seem to refer to songs, though I'm dimly
reminded of Spanish use of *equipo* to mean 'group, band' in musical
contexts, and to mean 'team, club' in sports – a different but similar sort
of shift.  "Outfit" has actually been used in English to mean 'band, group;
team; gang', though it seems nearly extinct in that sense. The Spanish word
also means 'equipment, system', 'I equip', 'kit, set', and 'uniform' in
various contexts (the last being especially interesting here).

--
Stanton McCandlish
McCandlish Consulting
5400 Foothill Blvd Suite B
Oakland CA 94601-5516

+1 415 234 3992

https://www.linkedin.com/in/SMcCandlish

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