[Ads-l] more on "on the Fritz" transition

[Stephen Goranson]

Among previously reported cases of transition from a (colloquially expressed) frozen state (friz or fritz) to a non-working (and such) state were, e.g. :
1897 "friz up all de creeks"

1901 "getting t' be on de Fritz"

1901 "For everything 't was frizable, that year was friz."

1902 "Would Santa Claus be on the "fritz"
If we never had any snow?"

Here's another potential 1901 item (Nov. 8 1901 letter printed Jan. 2, 1902 in Crawfordsville (Indiana) Weekly 7/3).*
An Signal Corpsman in Ft. Egbert Alaska speaks of cold, ice, and little work do do, including:

"This country is on the Fritz proper [...]"

Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/

compare:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=37303

*
https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=CWJ19020103.1.7&txq=%22on+the+fritz%22


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