and Etymology On-line
.
dave@unm.edu
Southpaw.
Humorist Finley Peter Dunne, then a sportswriter, coined
this word for a left-handed baseball pitcher while covering sports in
Chicago in the 1880's. Home plate in the Chicago ball park was then to the
west, so that a left-handed pitcher released the ball from the "paw", or
hand, on the south side. The word soon came to describe any left-hander.
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These are some of my favorites below. Use these resources if you need to look something up immediately. I appreciate anyone requesting
a word origin to send me one of their favorites including the citation.
Other sites with word and phrase origins:
IPL Pathfinder: Word and Phrase Origins
and
Etymology On-line
.
dave@unm.edu