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Word for the Wise January 09, 2007 Broadcast Topic: Words of 1793

If we were to ask for the location and the date of the first manned flight in America, we would guess many folks might come up with Kitty Hawk and the early 1900s. If we were to ask for the last name of the fellow who first left American soil, we'd guess the name Wright would probably get mentioned. (来源:www.EnglishCN.com)

But Wright would be wrong, as would Kitty Hawk and the 20th century. Try this: Philadelphia, 1793, and Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Okay, so that "manned flight" took place in a balloon, not in an airplane, and we doubt the flight was high enough for an epistaxis (or nosebleed). But the event was exciting, and the young nation's chief executive, George Washington, was there for the show.

So here’s a poser: how does this tale of early flight tie in with words? Word lovers may know our story as something other than a flight of fancy; we’ve incorporated four terms whose earliest known appearance in print dates to the same year Blanchard made his successful flight.

1793 marks the first known print appearance of the terms chief executive, poser, and tie in. And, as you might expect, 1793 was also the birth year of epistaxis, which preceded the synonymous nosebleed into the lexicon by more than half a century.

 
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