[Ads-l] years young

[Jonathan Lighter]

1879 _N.Y. Times_ (Dec. 21, 1873) 2: The Roxburgh Club...is now sixty-one
years old, or sixty-one years young, for the young blood circulating
therein has given a new lease to the club's vitality.


Former presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886) is meant:

1884 _Alllentown [Pa.] Critic_  (May 27) 2: A cotemporary [sic] speaks of
your Uncle Tilden as only seventy years young. Many a youth north of that
age is earning his living by the sweat of his brow here in Allentown. To
call the Greystone Sage old is an insult to many a Lehigh countian.

I haven't checked OED, but I thought the antiquity of these exx. might be
diverting.

JL

-- 
"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