[Ads-l] antedating "focus group"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Mar 10 20:15:09 UTC 2021


Instant clarification:

Newspapers.com IDs the 1935 paper as cited, but the title on p. 1 is _The
Peru [Nebr.] Enterprise_.

The July 4, 1935, date, however, is correct.

JL

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 3:06 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> OED : 1936  (in ref. to Winston Churchill).
> MW: 1965
>
> 1935 _Auburn [Nebr.] Journal_ (July 4) 1: The activities...are varied and
> interesting - Gospel Teams[,]  Focus Groups, Visitations, and Social hours.
>
> The nuance here (as in 1936) appears to be a small group that meets to
> focus on and discuss a given issue.  Hence the narrow, now predominant
> sense, which becomes common in the mid '60s.
>
> The 1935 and 1936 exx. appear to be real outliers.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>


-- 
"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