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H7iaf Other Editors Arc Saying“On the Lam”In a play having to do with the tangled affairs of Jesse James, one of the character; prudently in absentia Ls described as “on the lam Whether the phrase had been coined at the time Missouri’s then Public Enemy No. 1 was agitating the border has occasioned a philological dispute. Professorial yeas and nays are violently collidingOur learned contemporary the New York Herald Tribune has pored over standard tomes of unconventional speech, only to find them exasperatingly silent. Tin* one exception is Webster s. which iec ads the expression as applying to a fugitive from justice, and brands v as slang of obscure origin. Police memoirs, we are informed, recall the term as current in the underworld in the Jesse James period.The phi a e. as a matter of fact, might be said to have classical sanction It, antedates Je.se James by several centuries. It was in print before Will Shakespeare and the ever-mysteri-©us dark lady of the sonnets. It may be found in the form “on lam lt;the ‘’the being omitted for metrical reasons) in the accounts of the bawdy gang that Oeoffrey Chaucer piloted to Canterbury and forever after.—St. Louls Post Dispatch.
Newspaper Details
Maryville Daily Forum
Maryville, Missouri, US
Fri, Sep 30, 1938
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Joplin P.
MO, USA 03 Sep 2024
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