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Topic: Terms of 1908 & 1935

With a stroke of his pen, President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned the Social Security Act into law on this date in 1935. More than seven decades later, social security remains part of our national conversation. Perhaps surprisingly, the phrase social security predates the Social Security Act by some 27 years. That's right: social security, with the sense naming "the principle or practice or a program of public provision for the economic security and social welfare of the individual and his or her family" first appeared in print in 1908. That was also the same year another 195 terms entered in dictionaries saw their first-known use in print. The 1908 coinages range from cutie to pacifist and from chichi to carsick.

1935 welcomed even more terms—another few dozen, more than 200 in all—into the print lexicon. That list includes al dente and apple polish; agitprop and flashbulb.

But can you identify which year fire truck first appeared in print and which year school bus did? What about tin ear and Tin Pan Alley? Lexicographers have traced the first known print appearance of both fire truck and tin ear to 1935. The terms school bus and Tin Pan Alley are older; they date back to 1908.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.