[Ads-l] antedating "snake-eyes"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Apr 23 16:56:53 UTC 2025


Among the colorful names for points thrown, this one appears surprisingly
late.  It is undoubtedly the most widely known.

JL

On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 12:41 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > A throw of two in the game of craps.  OED:1929.
> >
> > 1916 _Cleveland Press_ (Aug.) 1 :“Little Jo,” “Box Cars,” “Snake Eyes,”
> or
> > “Phoebe.”
>
> Nice work, JL. Back in January 2016 Bill Mullins initiated a thread
> about antedating the dice roll sense of "snake eyes". Peter Reitan
> shared a citation from the Chronicling America database dated March 9,
> 1916. Here is a link to Peter's post:
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-January/140326.html
>
> Here is a link to the citation in the newspapers.com database:
> https://www.newspapers.com/article/mansfield-mirror-snakeeyes/170931460/
>
> Garson
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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