First Known Use of a Word

In researching words and names for this site, I am often looking for the first known use of a word in English. I recently found an interesting online tool called Time Traveler that allows you to enter a year and see the words first recorded in that year. The site is part of Merriam-Webster.com so these results are based on their dictionaries.

I took a look at words from 1953 and was surprised that some words only appeared that year and that some came that early in history. The list is a kind of lens on what was happening in that year.

Here are a few words that had their first known use in 1953.

• ballpoint pen
• bench press
• blacklight 
• cherry bomb
• flea collar main manmalathion
• male-pattern baldness
• Medicare
• random-access memory
• real-time
• rebar
• RSVP
• saber saw 
• stiletto heels
• sunblock
• trans-fatty acid
• UFO
• videotape and videotape recorder
• wax museum
• whoopee cushion

With each word or phrase, you can look at the origin. For example, with "UFO" you find:
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT
"All right." The President sighed. "Is there anybody around this table who thinks UFOs and this signal from Vega have anything to do with each other?"  — Carl Sagan
In 1966, the first UFO "abduction" was described in journalist John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey.  — Keay Davidson

First Known Use of UFO, 1953, in the meaning defined above

The site cautions that the date may not represent the very oldest sense of the word. 

Many obsolete, archaic, and uncommon senses have been excluded from this dictionary, and such senses have not been taken into consideration in determining the date.

The date most often does not mark the very first time that the word was used in English. Many words were in spoken use for decades or even longer before they passed into the written language. The date is for the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover.

These dates also change as evidence of still earlier use emerges.

The First Known Use Date will appear in one of three rounded off styles:
For the Old English period (700-1099), "before 12th century"
For the Middle English period (1100-1499), by century (e.g., "14th century")
For the Modern English period (1500-present), by year (for example, "1942")

Nyctophiles and Night

Night image from Pixabay

I came across the word nyctophile and had to look it up. Nyctophile (noun) is a person who has a special love for night and darkness. I think I am one of those people.

This word has Greek origins – nyktos literally means night and‎ philos stands for love. We have a lot of words using phile from phileein meaning to love or to show a love of something. Bibliophiles love books. Cinephiles love the cinema. Astrophiles love astronomy and the stars. I am all of those things.

I do like (love?) nighttime and I am more active at night (nocturnal? not really). But I started to wonder what the actual difference is (if there actually is a difference) between words like night, dusk, evening, nightfall, twilight, eventide, and sundown. When is it officially "night"?

Dusk, evening and twilight are commonly used interchangeably to mean the period from sunset/sundown until nighttime. But I've also seen nightfall, eventide used for that period. I don't think anyone would correct you if at sundown you said "I love the light at dusk." 

Looking up these terms it seems that "dusk" is a period of time occurring at the end of the day during which the sunsets. "Evening" is the time of the day between dusk and night, when it gets dark. Dusk occurs when the geometric center of the Sun is 18° below the horizon in the evening.

In the 48 contiguous U.S. states, it takes anywhere from 70 to 100 minutes for it to get dark after sunset and the further north you are, the longer it takes for true darkness to arrive after sundown.

What about twilight? That is the time between daylight and darkness and seems to be applied to the time after sunset and also before sunrise when the light appears diffused and often pinkish. The sun is below the horizon, but its rays are still scattering because of the Earth's atmosphere to create the colors. So, there are two twilights - the periods between the dawn and sunrise, and the time between sunset and dusk.

Is that clear or more confusing? By the way, sunrise and sunset are defined as the exact times when the upper edge of the disc of the Sun is at the horizon. That's an easy one to identify.

Name Changing: Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs

 
July 23, 2020

Effective immediately, Washington will call itself the “Washington Football Team”, pending adoption of a new name. This is not a final renaming and rebranding for team; this is the name it wants to use until pending adoption of a new name in the future.

July 14, 2020: This week the Washington Redskins announced that they would be retiring their nickname and logo after completing a thorough review that began on July 3.

An earlier post here about how team names change as the team moves from city to city ended with a mention of the football Washington Redskins. Their name and logo have been controversial for a long time and particularly in the past few years there has been greater public outcry to change them. 

The logo that was controversial and that has been retired

The Washington Redskins name controversy involves the name and the logo of the team. Native American individuals, tribes, and organizations have been questioning the use of the name and image for decades. Over 115 professional organizations representing civil rights, educational, athletic, and scientific experts have published resolutions or policies that state that the use of Native American names and/or symbols by non-native sports teams is a harmful form of ethnic stereotyping that promotes misunderstanding and prejudice which contributes to other problems faced by Native Americans.

The Washington Redskins team is only one example of the larger controversy, but it receives the most public attention due to the name itself being defined as derogatory or insulting in modern dictionaries and the prominence of the team representing the nation's capital.

a "less controversial" script logo used by the Redskins (1972–2019) Sportslogos.net, Public Domain

When an NFL franchise was bought for Boston in 1933, the team was set to play at the home of the baseball Boston Braves so it adopted the same name. The following year, the Braves moved to Fenway Park and changed their name to the Redskins. The Redskins name traveled with the team to become the Washington Redskins. Of course, the baseball Atlanta Braves, also use American Indian imagery - and a pretty tasteless "chop" motion in the stands by fans.

It is just a matter of time before the same pressure is put to bear on other teams, such as the NFL's  Kansas City Chiefs who also use Native American imagery in its logo of an Indian arrowhead. 

The team was supposedly named in honor of Kansas City mayor Harold Roe Bartle who was instrumental in bringing the AFL Dallas Texans to Kansas City, MO in 1963. Bartel earned his nickname as the founder of a Boy Scouts honor camping society Tribe of Mic-O-Say in which he was "Chief" Lone Bear. But their logo doesn't seem to represent that origin story.

In 1989 the Chiefs switched from Warpaint, a Pinto horse ridden by a man in a feathered headdress, to their current mascot K. C. Wolf. A horse named Warpaint returned in 2009 but is ridden by a cheerleader.

John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band

JOHN CAFFERTY and the BEAVER BROWN BAND are best remembered for their soundtrack to the movie Eddie and the Cruisers. 

,

The band was from the Cranston Rhode Island area in the early 1970s. They were doing the garage band practice when someone saw a Dutch Boy paint can that was called Beaver Brown and that became the original name of the band.  Lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist John Cafferty's name was added to the band's name for their first album's release. 

Before the hit soundtrack made them famous, they had some early success in 1980 with a self-released single that had the songs "Wild Summer Nights" and "Tender Years" - both of which would appear later on the movie soundtrack. Though it had East Coast airplay, they didn't get signed by a label.

The band was sometimes compared favorably to the sound of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band and critics liked them but it was an offer from producer Kenny Vance to score a movie he was doing that launched their career.

The film was based on the novel of the same name by P. F. Kluge about some reporters doing a story on a fictional New Jersey bar band called Eddie and the Cruisers that was legendary locally in their time locally. 

The film was in heavy rotation on HBO in the early 1980s and the soundtrack album reached the top 10 on the Billboard chart and produced a top 10 single, "On the Dark Side." The album was eventually certified triple Platinum by the RIAA.

John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band continue to tour and other songs by them have been used on the soundtracks of other major motion pictures.

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In like a lion, out like a lamb

News about the pandemic seemed to push aside the usual stories on the news about the weather. “In like a lion, out like a lamb” has always seemed a straightforward enough proverb about the weather in March. March begins in winter, and by the end of the month, spring has begun, so it is often a mean lion at the start and a gentle lamb at the end. 

Some websites call the phrase an 18th-century expression. A 1732 citation lists it as “Comes in like a Lion, goes out like a Lamb.” Wikipedia says it originated in Pennsylvania. 

There is even a celestial explanation. In March, Leo is the rising sign but by April Aries is rising. (Ram, kid, lamb?) 

It is less frequently applied to situations where someone starts strongly and ends weakly, as in " The President came in like a lion but went out like a lamb."