[Ads-l] Antedating of "Knuckle Ball"

[Laurence Horn]

Curiously, neither the OED nor AHD has an entry for the metaphorical sense
of "knuckleball" (often in the collocation "a real knuckleball"), for
something unexpected, a reference to the unpredictable movement of a
knuckler.  As in "a knuckleball (of a) question" in an interview.  There
are a few cites one can find without too much effort, as in this one from a
1994 issue of Artforum at
https://www.artforum.com/print/199404/golden-memories-33428

I don’t think truth, assertion, and interpretation are ever minor issues in
art. What I’m trying to do is to rethink them along other lines than I have
in the past. As for the “delay,” it leaves all media as they are. Their
differences are still in place, maybe even more available to the perception
of each one’s concrete separateness. Precisely one of the things I liked in
Klein’s work was his use of multiple media. His artistic identity wasn’t
bound by allegiance to one or another.

*I-Box* has been pretty good with its delay. A real knuckleball. But
eventually it too will recede into accepted “truth,” its
complexity/simplicity duly noted, its historical moment recorded. Then,
probably, it will be difficult to “see” it anymore.
or this one in a discussion of arms control negotiations during the (20th
c.) Cold War

The arms control bureaucracy also continued its usual disagreements, and
Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle tossed a knuckleball into the field
with a zero ballistic missile proposal.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/cold-war-termination

--but no dictionary entries that I located, much less an attempt at a first
cite.

LH

On Mon, Aug 8, 2022 at 12:50 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> knuckle ball (OED 1927)
>
> 1907 _Marion_ (Ohio) _Daily Mirror_ 11 May 15/2 (Newspapers.com)
>
> The knuckle ball had the Giants completely baffled.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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