[Ads-l] Bronx cheer (September 1921)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Great work as always, Bonnie.

JL

On Thu, Mar 28, 2024 at 9:34 PM Bonnie Taylor-Blake <b.taylorblake at gmail.com>
wrote:

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


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