[Ads-l] Scandalous!
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Jul 12 22:08:21 UTC 2023
OED cannot date the current game of tic-tac(k)-toe ("noughts and crosses")
any earlier than 1960.
I personally learned the game, under the current name, from my
nineteenth-century grandparents in the early 1950s.
OED also has an earlier children's game of the same name, from 1885. I'll
leave it to others to track down when the seemingly newer sense developed.
JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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