[Ads-l] Antedating of "Ballpark" (Adjective)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

And a few months earlier still (in the form of a Q-and-A; the initial "?" is in the original text):

1956 _Petroleum Processing_ May 65/2
? On a barrel-for-barrel basis, how much additional fresh gas oil could be charged to a unit operating at coke burning capacity by the withdrawal of slurry?
Clarke: A ball-park figure would seem to be about 3 bbl per bbl. Beyond that, however, I think we might state a range of from two to eight or so.

https://archive.org/details/sim_petroleum-processing_1956-05_11_5/page/n74/mode/1up

Jesse Sheidlower


On Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 09:48:46AM -0400, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
> Congratulations to  Ken Liss. Here is a slightly earlier citation for
> "ballpark figure".
> 
> Date: November 1956
> Periodical: Control Engineering
> Volume 3, Issue 11
> Section: Feedback
> Title: When transistors overload
> Quote Page 12
> Publisher: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York
> Database: Internet Archive
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> Accurate calculation of the signal frequency at which the transistor
> will overload is difficult. Because rigorous methods seem
> unreasonable, we asked Aronson to develop some rules-of-thumb which
> would give the applier of power transistors some "ballpark" figure for
> frequency limits.
> [End excerpt]
> 
> Garson
> 
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 8:10 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> >
> > ballpark, adj. (OED 1960)
> >
> > “Pentagon language continues to produce new bafflers. One of them is ‘a ballpark figure,’ meaning a very rough estimate which doesn’t do much more than indicate that a given program is going to cost someone an awful lot of money.” The Des Moines Register, June 24, 1957, p16
> >
> > NOTE: This antedating was found by Ken Liss.
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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