[Ads-l] Or is it just me?

[Charles C Rice]

Interesting phrase, Jonathan. Searching the newspaper databases is tricky because their interfaces still rely on searching content words while this phrase is entirely stop words except for "just." I managed to push it back to 1920 with Google n-gram + books:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/American_Cookery/MvpDAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22is+it+just+me%22&pg=PA576&printsec=frontcover
Fargo, Ruth. "Topsy-Turvey". American Cookery XXIV: 8. March 1920. 576-81. This is a one-sided epistolary story set between June 1919-April 1920.
"Aunt Marian has been here two months. Every morning I get up wishing she would stay forever -- but by night I 
am glad she is going on the eighteenth. Did you ever feel toward any one like that -- or is it just me; am I so at 
fault, I wonder?"

N-gram viewer insists there are examples in 1822 and 1823 but then doesn't disclose them. 

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2022 7:16 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Or is it just me?

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'Or am I the only one who feels this way?'  Now common, but absent from OED.

1937 _Columbus [O.] Dispatch_ (Nov. 22) B-3: Hasn't there been a change in attitude these last two years or so concerning Michigan?...Or is it just me? Winning from the Wolverines doesn't seem so important as it once did.


JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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