What's the lowdown on the commuter with the nifty T-shirt?

You might peg that sentence as a slice of late 20th-century lingo, but in fact it could have been uttered in 1919. "Lowdown" first appeared in American English in 1915, "commuter" in 1865, "nifty" in 1863 and "T-shirt" in 1919.

These spry Americanisms are featured in "America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America," a fascinating book by David Barnhart and Allan Metcalf. This lively lexicon includes over 300 American coinages arranged chronologically by the year of each term's debut.

We learn that "credit card" was swiped from Edward Bellamy's 1888 novel "Looking Backward" (where it designated what we would call a debit card) and that GI and D-Day first appeared during World War I, not World War II.

Likewise, you might assume "bogus," meaning "fake," arose from 1960s surfer slang, but it was first used in 1797 to designate a phony coin. And when "airline" took off in 1813, 90 years before the Wright Brothers' flight, it referred to a straight line on a map indicating the shortest distance between two points. (The most direct route to the top of Mt. Adams in New Hampshire, for instance, is called "the Airline.")

"Pothole" first jarred a wagon axle in 1826. "Skyscraper" soared in 1840, meaning "a high-flying bird." Americans were cottoning on to blue jeans as early as 1855, and "multicultural" and "Ms." showed up, not during the 1960s, but in 1941 and 1952, respectively.

Other Americanisms with a surprisingly long lineage include "mileage" from 1753 (Did Ben Franklin calculate his?) and "cure-alls" in 1821 (from an era when Big Pharma was still Big Farm-a).

Some of our earliest words were borrowed from Native American languages, e.g., "canoe" (1555), "moccasin" (1612) and "moose" (1613). Others were early adoptees from European or African languages, e.g., "tamale" (from Spanish, 1691), "boss" (from Dutch, 1649) and "tote" (from Bantu, 1677).

Admittedly, many early Americanisms are a little ... well, wooden. "Backlog" (1684) originally referred to the large log in the back of the fireplace; its metaphoric meaning of "an accumulation" fired up during the 1800s.

A "log rolling" (1792) occurred when pioneer families pitched in to roll logs into a pile; its political meaning of "reciprocal back-scratching" first logged on in 1809.

And you know that 10-foot pole we wouldn't touch something with? This term referred to a standard measuring stick used by surveyors as early as 1738.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His new book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. COPYRIGHT 2022 CREATORS.COM

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