[Ads-l] Antedating of "Jukebox"
Peter Reitan
pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM
Thu May 16 23:27:33 UTC 2024
Same month.
[Begin Excerpt]Lawrence E. Jones, who operates the Jones Malt Shop on West Foothill, marked 20 nickles [(sic)] the other day with a dab of red nail polish, as a means of identification for use in the automatic phonograph, better known as the juke box.[End Excerpt]
Monrovia News-Post, Monrovia, California, September 12, 1939, page 1. https://www.newspapers.com/article/monrovia-news-post/147353451/ Newspapers.com.
This article was likely a couple weeks later than the September issue of Fortune, as Fortune magazine at that time, was apparently published a few days before the month on the cover. For example, an article in the Arizona Republic of April 28, 1939, mentioned that the publication date of the May issue had been the day previous.
"Juke Box" appears in print regularly after September of that year, in Iowa, Minnesota, Washington State and California.
An October article says that the expression is used in "the trade," a December article refers to the expression as "criminal slang," and an August 1940 article says that a "'juke joint' is one of those cabarets where the entertainment comes out of a juke box,'" although "juke joint" appeared in print years earlier.
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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
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Subject: Antedating of "Jukebox"
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Subject: Antedating of "Jukebox"
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jukebox (OED 1939 Nov.)
1939 _Fortune_ Sept. 94 (Internet Archive) Juke-boxes are a big business a=
ll in themselves.
Fred Shapiro
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