[Ads-l] "beer goggles" antedates

[Jesse Sheidlower]

The earliest use of _beer goggles_ 'the effects of alcohol thought of metaphorically as a pair of goggles that alter a person's perceptions especially by making others appear more attractive than they actually are' (Merriam-Webster definition) has long been pegged at 1987; in HDAS (entry published 1994) this was from Connie Eble's collections for Fall, but eventually (in OED and Wikipedia) this was moved back a bit to a January issue of _Playboy_.

Here are a few slightly earlier examples from the Internet Archive, with the first two from that great source, the yearbook, in which they typically if unfortunately appear as entries in unexplained lists:

1983 _Epitome_ (Yearbook, Lehigh University, PA) 223: Delta Phi...think about what you're saying...wallpaper...rocks...beer goggles. [all ellipses except the first in original]
https://archive.org/details/epitomeyearb107lehi/page/222/mode/2up

1983 _Weston_ (Yearbook, Weston High School, MA) 190: The '82 Ski Trip, 78¢ sixpack, driving through snowbanks, stacking wood, Beer Goggles.
https://archive.org/details/westonhighschool1983west/page/190/mode/2up

1985 _Lambda_ (Laurentian University, Ontario) 7 Nov. 10/4: What's this about Karen B.? and are you two sharing Carol H.? I hope you fellas can blame all this on a severe pair of beer goggles.
https://archive.org/details/LambdaVol.24No.9/page/n9/mode/1up

1986 G. Wolff _Providence_ 55: He hated to hunt, to fit himself with beer goggles so everyone began to look tasty half an hour before the bar closed.
https://archive.org/details/providencenove00wolf/page/54/mode/2up

Jesse Sheidlower

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