[Ads-l] Bronx cheer (September 1921)

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

OED has a 1929 use of "Bronx cheer" as its earliest example of the expression.

HDAS betters that with a sighting from 1927.

Barry Popik has pushed this back to 19 October 1921, however.

https://barrypopik.com/new_york_city/entry/bronx_cheer

Here's a slightly earlier appearance.

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The Jewel of Georgia got the old familiar Bronx cheer when he came to
bat for the first time in the first inning. Tyrus would probably be
sadly disappointed were he not so greeted in New York. [Damon Runyon,
"Yanks Beat Tigers by 4 to 2 Count and Go Back into Lead as Indians
Lose," New York (New York) American, 19 September 1921, p. 8. "Tyrus,"
of course, is Ty Cobb. Via Geneaologybank.com.]

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No raspberries from me if anyone shares still earlier examples.

I should mention that Green's Dictionary of Slang has two seemingly
very early citations, one from 1908 and another from 1911.

https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/2z2oc6i

But I'm afraid that these are misdated: Google Books's metadata are
wrong. These texts appeared in 1939 and 1941, respectively.
(Publication details are below.)

-- Bonnie

The first is on p. 41 of _Get Organized: Stories and Poems about Trade
Union People_, ed. Alan Calmer. New York: International Publishers,
1939. It's in a short story by Theodore T. Kaufman. (This URL will
kind of work. You may need to search for "Bronx cheer," however.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3922420&seq=130&q1=bronx+cheer)

The second is on p. 43 of William Hawley Davis's "Familiar Figurative
English Expressions," _Stanford Studies in Language and Literature_, a
collection edited by Hardin Craig and published in 1941, on the
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Stanford University.
(https://www.google.com/books/edition/STANFORD_STUDIES_IN_LANGUAGE_AND_LITERAT/AINxbYO1ZqQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22stanford+studies%22+%22bronx+cheer%22&pg=PA43&printsec=frontcover)

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