[Ads-l] Antedating of "Free Throw" (Basketball)

[Shapiro, Fred]

Good catch, Larry.  I was assuming, without reading the quotation too carefully, that this was the foul-shot meaning.

Fred Shapiro

________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 7, 2022 8:51 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Antedating of "Free Throw" (Basketball)

Presumably an entirely different referent from the modern "FREE throw",
i.e. a foul shot. This sounds like it might be a "free THROW", not a
lexical item or in any case not the same free throw as the one we have now.
The OED has one general entry for "free throw" across sports ("A throw
which can be taken without obstruction by opponents or defenders, typically
awarded as a penalty for a foul committed by an opposing team"), where I
would have expected a specific entry for the basketball use ("a chance or
attempt to score from a designated line in front of the basket, awarded in
this way"); in either case the above cite, if I understand Naismith's
context, would need to be included within brackets since it's not awarded
as a penalty. I know, it's his game, but still...

LH

On Fri, Oct 7, 2022 at 11:54 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> free throw (Basketball) (OED 1895)
>
> 1894 James Naismith in _The Triangle_ Jan. in _The James Naismith Reader_
> (2021) 207  A man is not allowed to pass the ball from the field of play
> out in order to get a free throw.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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