Date:  Wed, 7 Jan 1998 00:37:20 -0500
From:  Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: All America (1889)

At 12:12 AM 1/7/98 EST, you wrote:
>   "All America" is an Americanism.
>   It's not slang, so it's not in the HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN
>SLANG.
>   It's not regional (it's All American), so it's not in the DICTIONARY OF
>AMERICAN REGIONAL ENGLISH.
>   It wasn't in the DICTIONARY OF AMERICANISMS and it wasn't in the OXFORD
>ENGLISH DICTIONARY that I could see.
>   Drove me nuts!!
>   At the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana, Nancy Eide
>(Nancy.Eide[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CollegeFootball.org) responded that "All America" was first used
>in "This Week's Sport" (whatever that is) in 1889. There must have been other
>lists published soon after this--leading to the phrase "everybody's All
>American" that I found ten years later and that was the title of a Frank
>Deford novel and film.
>

See also, in OED2, all, section E (combs., far down in the entry), meaning
6b, where the first cite, dated Nov. 1888, is from _Outing_ (a periodical, I
imagine). All-American appears thirteen times times in OED2, but the early
cites are in the passage just indicated.

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu