[Ads-l] How Things Have Changed, As Illustrated by the Word "Jazz"

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Mon Mar 18 12:03:07 UTC 2024


I've been studying Robert S. Gold's 1975 book "Jazz Talk."  This is an historical dictionary with dated citations, and appears to have been thoroughly researched.  I of course do not criticize Gold for working in the pre-database era, but it is striking that his earliest citation for the musical word "jazz" itself is dated 1917.  Nowadays newspaper databases readily retrieve dozens of 1916 uses of musical "jazz" and one 1915 use.

Fred Shapiro

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


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