|
|
February 2008Happy Birthday: 1929In the spirit of Leap Year, with its extra day in February, we take the liberty to jump one year ahead to celebrate words first appearing 80 years ago, in 1929. In the heyday of Prohibition, seven men associated with Bugs Moran's gang were lined up and shot in a Chicago garage. The February 14, 1929 executions, traced back to Al Capone's crew, were dubbed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Some eighty years later, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre remains well known; so too are many of the words that first appeared in print that year.
It's easy to find which words saw the first light of print in a particular year. Select the Collegiate as the reference, click on Advanced Search, type the year in the Date field, and click on Search. |