[Ads-l] Antedating of Spitball v.

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Sun May 19 22:49:11 UTC 2024


John Baker wrote:
> Nice work, Garson.  I wonder why my Newspapers.com search
> did not find this example.

Based on your citations I performed a search for "just spitballing" in
newspapers.com which found multiple matches dated  August 4, 1950.
That was not my first query. I iterated toward that query because of
its simplicity and because of my laziness.

A search for "just spit balling" does not find these matches.

I am not sure what queries you executed. The results generated by
queries can be counterintuitive. Some search engines generate more
matches when you add a conjunctive term which from a strictly logical
viewpoint is impossible. This behavior occurs because some search
engines do not show all matches.

Garson

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