[Ads-l] to croak

[Jonathan Lighter]

In theory. But the other fits the grammatical pattern (with "were"
suppressed in headlinese), and indeed two soldiers were croaked.

And the usage does go back more than fifty years before 1876.

The croaker, BTW, was Wild Bill Hickock.

JL

On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 12:08 PM Ben Zimmer
<00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> Couldn't "croaked" simply be intransitive here?
>
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 9:14 AM Jonathan Lighter <
> 00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > 'To kill.'
> >
> > OED/HDAS have this in English criminal lingo from 1819, and U.S.
> > likewise from 1847 but this is an interesting general ex. ex. from the
> > American West:
> >
> > 1876 _St. Louis Weekly Globe-Democrat_ (Aug. 25) 2 [Newspapers.com] :
> > HOW HE KILLED JOE TUTT...SAM STRAWHAN SHOT DEAD...BILL MULVEY'S TURN
> > TO DIE...TWO SOLDIERS CROAKED.
> >
> >
>
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