|
|
|
I came across something interesting the other day, but it's entirely possible I'm just the last to figure it out.
It concerns the word "longshoreman," the origin of which I've had occasion to wonder about once or twice over the years.
The "shoreman" part was easy enough to pin down, of course, but I've sometimes idly wondered about the "long" in front of it -- until the other day, that is, when, while reading something published 1905, I came across this slightly different spelling of the word:
'longshoreman
That apostrophe leads me to wonder, was the word originally "alongshoreman," in reference to men who work along the shore?
Posted by brett at 08:43 PM | TrackBack