[Ads-l] Antedating of Spitball v.

[Baker, John]

I used “spitballing.”  “Spitball,” by itself, produced an unreasonably high number of noun uses.  It did not occur to me that “just spitballing” might find examples that “spitballing” did not.

Actually, I did not start out looking for spitball/spitballing at all.  I was searching for headshrinker (in connection with my other post) and came across the terms in an article on TV jargon.  Since it was an antedating (though, as it turned out, a number of years later than the New Yorker use that James Eric Lawson posted about), I shared it with the list.


John Baker


From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of ADSGarson O'Toole
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2024 6:49 PM
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Subject: Re: Antedating of Spitball v.

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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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