[Ads-l] antedating "snake-eyes"

[Jonathan Lighter]

1915 _Atlanta Journal_ (Aug. 8)  (Feature Sec.) 7: Forty bucks was lyin'
dar, hard an' roun' an' cole,/ "Shoot de wuks!" yell Ebenezer, den
snake-eyes roll.

Apparently no definition was needed.

JL

On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 12:56 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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."
>


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

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