Wednesday, November 30, 2011

History of English Language

I thought this video interesting, but not gun related.



My quibbles, 'Merger' with an etymology in the 1980s?  I knew that was wrong and used historically with railroad companies over 100 years ago, so I looked it up.  Huh.  1926 for common usage.  I guess that was why I double noticed it in a short story written in 1930s.  Detective fiction, naturally.  Maybe merger only came to England's shores in the 80's 

The same story used 'bozo'.  I had thought that was based on the clown famous on television so it couldn't predate TV, so... 50's at the earliest?  Nope, the clown predates TV in the 40s, and the word predates both back to the teens.

2 comments:

Broken Andy said...

Does your first link purposefully point to an article about a robbery in Houston or am I just missing the joke?

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

OOPS