[Ads-l] news to whippersnappers

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sat Feb 27 16:18:45 UTC 2021


https://www.yahoo.com/news/whats-adjective-democrat-party-label-145505007.html

I looked into this not long ago via the newspaper databases and found that
"Democrat party" alternated with "Democratic party" even for Democrats in
the 19th century. Nobody cared.

The intentionally dismissive Republican usage seems to have started in the
'30s or '40s, if not before. (Think League of Nations.) Joe McCarthy liked
to say "the Democrat party."

But here's a pioneering example from 1879, courtesy of Google Books:

"Why, sir, the Democrat party has smelt worse than Lazarus did after he had
been dead four days, for the last twelve years."

See, democracy good, Democrats bad. Pretty simple, when you think about it.

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list