hit the skids

November 11, 2021

Skid row, Los Angeles, 2001. An urban street, littered with trash, with crowds of homeless people and their possessions lining the sidewalks.

11 November 2021

Skid row is a term for a run-down area of a town where the unemployed, vagrants, alcoholics, tend to congregate. It is American in origin. Most sources will point to the older skid road, a logging road that is “paved” with logs over which trees can be dragged, as the inspiration, but while skid road certainly was an influence, a more important influence was the phrase hit the skids.

In nineteenth-century logging lingo, a skid was a tree trunk laid perpendicular across a road over which logs could be dragged. We can see this use of skid in an 1851 book about forestry in Maine and New Brunswick:

In constructing this road, first all the underbrush is cut and thrown on one side; all trees standing in its range are cut close to the ground, and the trunks of prostrated trees cut off and thrown out, leaving a space from ten to twelve feet wide. The tops of the highest knolls are scraped off, and small poles, called skids, are laid across the road in the hollows between.

And we see skid road applied to a road that is paved with skids in the Morning Oregonian of 27 February 1877:

Some time during last season one putting in saw logs on the Weatherby place, for a long distance cross-laid the road with round timbers 10 to 12 inches in diameter placed about six feet apart and about half buried beneath the ground, making what loggers call a “skid road.” This does very well for hauling logs on, but not very interesting for wagons to pass over.

The use of skid road was particularly prevalent in the Pacific Northwest, undoubtedly due to that region’s heavy reliance on the logging industry.

But the association between skids and sliding garnered another sense, that of sliding into failure or defeat. We see this sense in baseball writing at the turn of the twentieth century in the phrase hit the skids, meaning to go into a slump. From an article in the Rockford Morning Star of 5 August 1906 about the world champion New York Giants:

Bowerman had his friends in the club, and they resented McGraw’s partiality toward Bresnahan. Ever since this incident the world’s champions have been arrayed into two factions, one bunch being with Bresnahan and the other being well-disposed toward Bowerman. The latter is a great hitter and catcher, and is giving McGraw the best he had in stock this season, but “insiders” regard it as significant that Sammy Mertes, one of Bowerman’s closest friends, was the first to hit the “skids” when McGraw started out to say that Roger [Bresnahan] can discount Bowerman with the bat.

Two years later, the Giants were in another slump. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of 18 May 1908:

New York seems to have hit the skids for Cellarville or near it. Cincinnati is playing improved ball and Wiltse could not hold the Reds in check yesterday.

And by 1921 we start to see skid row being used to refer to the section of a city where those who have hit the skids and become homeless congregate. From Almira Bailey’s 1921 Vignettes of San Francisco:

They say that San Francisco is the known all over as the Port O’ Missing Men. That is, a city where a man may lose himself if he chooses, and that by the same token it is a good place to look for my wandering boy tonight. I can believe all this especially on Third street. Third street should be called by some other name or it should have a nickname. If it were Seattle it would be known as “skid row.” Third street doesn’t describe it at all.
When I see a lot of men like that, wanderers, family men out of work, vagabonds, nobodies, somebodies, “rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor, lawyer, merchant chief,” I always get to thinking how once each one was a tiny baby in a thin white dress, and how before that each one was born of a woman.

It’s clear from reading these paragraphs that Bailey did not coin skid row and that it was in use in Seattle, if not elsewhere as well. The earlier use of skid road may have played a part in the coining or the popularity of skid row. And any use in Seattle may have especially been influenced by the logging term, given that industry’s importance to the region. But the more apropos metaphor remains that of hitting the skids and being down on one’s luck.

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Sources:

Bailey, Almira. Vignettes of San Francisco. San Francisco: San Francisco Journal, 1921, 21. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. skid road, n.

“Giants Have Slump.” Rockford Morning Star (Illinois), 5 August 1906, 10. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. skid row, n., skids, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. skid row, n., skid, n.

“The Road Down the River.” Morning Oregonian (Portland), 27 February 1877, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Sidelights on the Game.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 18 May 1908, 10. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Springer, John S. Forest Life and Forest Trees. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1851, 84. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: The Erica Chang, 2001. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

skedaddle

November 10, 2021

A memeified frame from the 1975 film *Monty Python and the Holy Grail* depicting King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table skedaddling from the killer rabbit. The meme’s caption reads “Run away! Run Away!!”

10 November 2021

To skedaddle is to run away. The word rose to prominence in American slang during the US Civil War, but it probably has roots in English dialectal speech. Those roots, however, are not quite certain. Various Greek, Celtic, and Nordic etymologies have been proposed over the years, but with little to no evidence to support them.

Anatoly Liberman posits that it is a variant of the English dialect term scaddle—meaning wild, frisky, or to scare, frighten—with infix -da- added. And indeed, Francis Grose’s Provincial Glossary of 1787 has this entry:

Scaddle. That will not abide touching; spoken of young horses that fly out. In Kent, scaddle means thievish, rapacious. Dogs, apt to steal or snatch any thing that comes their way, are there said to be scaddle.

Liberman’s informed speculation is the most plausible explanation available. Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary of 1906 has entries for both scaddle and for skedaddle, but provides no citations for the latter that predate American use of the term. So, this explanation is possible, but by no means certain.

The earliest recorded use of skedaddle is in the Wellsboro Pennsylvania newspaper The Agitator on 12 January 1860, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. It appears in a humorous story about a traveler who arrives in a town shortly after a steamboat, the Franklin, suffered a boiler explosion with many casualities. Mistakenly thinking that he was on the boat, the townspeople are solicitous and go out of their way to make sure he is well and has all that he needs:

“Where did you find yourself after the ’splosion?”
“In a flat boat,” sez I.
“How far from the Frankling?” sez he.
“Why[”] sez I, “I never seed her, but as nigh as I can guess, about three hundred and seventy-five miles.”
“You’d oughter seen that gang skedaddle.”

And we get this note in Baltimore’s American and Commercial Advertiser of 21 October 1861, about fighting early in the war. The Baltimore paper says it is from the New York Post, but I have not found that earlier article:

“SKADADDLE.”—The Washington correspondent of one of the morning papers informs us that the German soldiers have christened the Rebel earthworks back of Munson’s Hill “Fort Skadaddle.”
For the benefit of future etymologists, who may have a dictionary to make out when the English language shall have adopted “skadaddle” into familiar use by the side of “employee” and “telegram,” we here define the new term.
It is at least an error of judgment, if not an intentional unkindness, to foist “skadaddle” on our Teutonic soldiers[.] The word is used throughout the whole army of the Potomac, and means “to cut slack,” “vamose the ranche,” “slope,” “cut your lucky,” or “clear out”—So that Fort Skadaddle is equivalent to the “Fort Runaway.”

A raft of uses of the term quickly follows, as the word gains traction throughout both armies. Of note, is this from San Francisco’s Steamer Bulletin of 11 September 1862 that uses skedaddle as a noun:

SPORT.—Gentlemen who live in Carson Valley state there are great quantities of trout in the river, returning to the sink from the mountain streams. Their skedaddle is caused by the falling of the stream and the fact that the season of incubation has passed. Persons living on the stream catch great numbers of them with the seine or hook, and literally feast on the luxury of fresh trout three times a day.

And by 1865 we get skedaddler, one who runs away, a coward. It appears in A New Pantomime by Irish writer Edward Kenealy. Green’s Dictionary of Slang mistakenly dates this to 1850, when the first version of the work was published, but it is not until the 1865 revised version that skedaddler appears in it. It’s in an exchange of insults, a sort of modern-day flyting:

Bow-legged Boozer, Ape, Apostate,
Chicken-hearted Maffler, Grub,
Numskull, Slanderer, base Skeadaddler,
Dare you thus a lady snub?

There we have it. Skedaddle rose to prominence during the US Civil War. It likely has its origins in English dialect, but we can’t be certain of that.

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Sources:

The Agitator (Wellsboro, Pennsylvania), 12 January 1860, 1. NewspaperArchive.

American and Commercial Advertiser (Baltimore), 21 October 1861, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. skedaddle, v.

Grose, Francis. A Provincial Glossary. London: S. Hooper, 1787. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Items from the Eastern Slope.” Steamer Bulletin (San Francisco), 11 September 1862, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Kenealy, Edward Vaughan. A New Pantomime, New Edition. London: Reeves and Turner, 1865, 393. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Liberman, Anatoly. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2008, xliv, 186–89.

———. Word Origins ... and How We Know Them. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005, 68.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. skedaddle, v.

Wright, Joseph. The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 5 of 6. Oxford: Henry Frowde, 1905, s.v. scaddle, adj. sb., and v., skedaddle, v., 231, 458.

Image credit: Python (Monty) Pictures, 1975, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (film), Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, directors. Fair use of a single, low-resolution frame from the film to illustrate the topic under discussion.

sixes and sevens, at

November 9, 2021

Five six-sided, red dice with white pips

9 November 2021

In present day usage, the phrase at sixes and sevens means to be in a state of disorder or confusion. The metaphor underlying the phrase is rather opaque nowadays, but the phrase comes out of dice games and gambling.

The phrase first appears in the late fourteenth century in the form set on six and seven, meaning to bet on a roll of six and seven. It appears in Book 4 of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (c.1383) in a passage in which the character Pandarus tells Troilus to risk everything for a chance at love and run off with Criseyde:

Forthi tak herte and thynk right as a knyght:
Thorugh love is broken al day every lawe.
Kith now somwhat thi corage and thi myght;
Have mercy on thiself for any awe.
Lat nat this wrecched wo thyn herte gnawe,
But manly sette the world on six and sevene;
And if thow deye a martyr, go to hevene!
(Therefore, take heart, and think as a true knight; laws are continuously broken through love. Now show a little of your courage and your strength; have mercy on yourself despite any fear. Don’t let this wretched woe gnaw at your heart, but manfully set the world on six and seven; and if you die a martyr, go to heaven!)

Gambling and risk can result in disorder and chaos, and that idea started to permeate the phrase by the late sixteenth century. We see this use of the phrase in a translation of one of John Calvin’s sermons on Deuteronomy, published in 1583:

We see then howe in this lawe the poore & the rich are taught their lesson. For as for the poore, although they see that one hath great aboundance of corne, that an other hath great plentie of wine: yet ought they not withstanding to beare their penurie patiently, and not to runne and scratch for other mens goods, as if they were left at sixe and seuen.

And by the end of the sixteenth century, being at sixes and sevens meaning being in a state of chaos and disorder was well established. From a 1597 commentary on the reign of King Edward II (1284–1327):

Edward the second of that name, may well bee placed in this ranke, for though hee was faire and well proportioned of body, yet he was crooked and euill fauoured in conditions, for he was so disposed to lightnesse and vanity, that hee refused the company of his Lords and men of honor, and haunted among villaines and vile persons; he delighted in drinking and riot, and loued nothing lesse than to keepe secret his owne counsailes though neuer so important, so that he let the affaires of his kingdome run at sixe and at seuens:

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Sources:

Beard, Thomas, trans. The Theatre of Gods Iudgements. London: Adam Islip, 1597, 459. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Calvin, John. “On Thursday the XXX. of Ianuarie, 1556.” Sermons of M. Iohn Calvin upon the Fifth Book of Moses Called Deuteronomie. Arthur Golding, trans. London: Henry Middleton, 1583, 833. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. The Riverside Chaucer. Larry D. Benson, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987, IV.617–23, 546.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. six, num.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, six, adj. and n.

Image credit: Pierre Salim, 2013. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

sideburns

November 8, 2021

8 November 2021

Sideburns are strips of hair grown down a person’s face and in front of the ears, that is to say, side-whiskers. The term is an alteration of the earlier burnside, which in turn comes from the name of Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was a less-than-competent Union general in the US Civil War (1861–65), who briefly commanded the Army of the Potomac, and after the war he become a successful politician, serving as governor of and then US senator from his native Rhode Island.

Many Civil War soldiers sported impressive sets of whiskers, but Burnside’s were in a class by themselves. As you can see from the photo here, his side whiskers were exceptionally bushy and extended all the way down his cheeks, becoming part of his moustache. His chin was clean shaven.

Sideburns is an excellent example of several etymological forces at work. There is folk etymology, where an unfamiliar term is altered to make it seem familiar. And there is the process by which a compound term goes from open (two words), to hyphenated (two words linked by a hyphen), and finally to closed (one word).

The use of burnside as a name for side-whiskers is found in print from shortly after the war. Here is an example from an article in the New York Mercury of 14 September 1867 that extols the virtues of eligible young men in the various regions where the paper circulated. This particular case refers to a man from Olneyville, Rhode Island, Burnside being governor of that state at the time:

Edward Suther, a modest prepossessing man of twenty-three; a clerk; devotes a great deal of his time to the cultivation of a pair of Burnsides; is reported to be expecting something from the girl on the Hill; income fair.

A few years later we have this example of burnsides from further afield, from Washington, Pennsylvania, 30 June 1869. From an article about the local graduating class:

One member of the class supports whiskers, ten wear “Burnsides,” a like number have goatees, six have raised mustaches, and four have attempted it, while eighteen go clean shaved.

But as the term spread and the temporal distance from Burnside’s Civil War fame grew, the syllables in the term swapped places, becoming sideburns. This bit of folk etymology is influenced by both side-whiskers and Burnside’s declining fame in other regions of the country.

We see the open compound side burns in an article in Minnesota’s Sunbeam of December 1875:

At the door we were met by a gentleman with side whiskers who informed us that his name was McClaren, Sheriff of the Moot court now in session [....]
McClaren fleeced them, for you know those “side burns” are killing to the girls, and add tone while among the “laddies;” poor Archie, we pity you.

Returning to Washington, Pennsylvania, we have this hyphenated form in reporting on a local baseball game on 14 June 1876:

Without saying anything about the youngman who left such a fine crop of “side-burns” in Brownsville in order to play in this game, we give the score as follows.

And three days later, on 17 June 1876, we see the closed compound in an article from San Saba, Texas:

The young man with the “sideburns” says that the News is mistaken in saying that the butchers sometime since sold drowned beef, as they kill their own meat and never buy from others.

For a man who, on paper, has a very impressive résumé, to be remembered chiefly for one’s facial hair must be something of a letdown. But, given the time and effort that Burnside must have devoted to cultivating such whiskers, perhaps he would not be displeased with his legacy. At least it’s better than being remembered for his disasters at Fredericksburg or the Battle of the Crater.

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Sources:

“Class of ’69.” Washington Reporter (Washington, Pennsylvania), 30 June 1869, 5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The Great Trial.” The Sunbeam (St. Paul, Minnesota), December 1875, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Amateur Newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society.

“Our Rural Bachelors.” New York Mercury, 14 September 1867, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Amateur Newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society.

“Local Affairs.” San Saba News (Texas). 17 June 1876, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Local Affairs.” Washington Reporter (Washington, Pennsylvania), 14 June 1876, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2016, modified December 2019, s.v. sideburn, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. burnside, n.

Image credit: Matthew Brady [?], c. 1863. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

trick or treat

November 7, 2021

7 November 2021

Trick or treating is the custom of children going from door to door in costume on Halloween begging for candy or other sweets. The trick is a threat of mischief or minor vandalism that will be delivered upon the household if the treat is not forthcoming. But trick or treat is not the first such custom; it was preceded by beggar’s night.

The earliest reference to a beggar’s night that I have found is in a 1909 story by Newton Fuessle titled “The Beggar’s Big Night.” The story, which appeared in several newspapers on or about 19 September 1909 is about a tramp who crashes a fancy-dress party:

As the evening wore on Tom had chucked a dainty creature, clad in the dazzling attire of a princess, under the chin, and princess and pauper had proceeded, arm in arm, to the punch bowl. He had held interesting conversations with a dozen of the merry-makers, only to feel a growing depression that his beggar’s night must end at all.

This might be a reference to a literal beggar’s night, a lucky night for a tramp or beggar, except that a month later the following appears in the Portsmouth Herald (New Hampshire) in reference to events to be held in nearby Eliot, Maine:

The young folks are already beginning to talk of what they will be able to have in the way of sport on “beggars’ night” Nov. 24.

And it seems that in Portsmouth region the begging for sweets happened on the night before Thanksgiving, not on Halloween.

Some fifteen years later, we get a reference to a beggar’s night held on Halloween, but in this case, it is from Iowa. And the tradition of celebrating beggar’s night at Halloween was common across the North and North Midland region of the United States but was especially prevalent in Ohio and Iowa. From the Fort Madison, Iowa Evening Democrat of 31 October 1924:

All week the ever restless youth of the city has been active. Last night was beggar’s night. The night before was picket night. But all these are preliminary—and mild too—tonight, the night of all nocturnal prank festivities.

And from the same paper of 27 October 1933:

The business of starting Hallowe’en a week before the date becomes obnoxious to most folks. It used to be that beggars’ night was staged the night before Hallowe’en. Now the practice is engaged in a week previous to the big event. Many folk are growing tired of having to go to the door 15 or 20 times a night to hear the request from grotesque figures: “We want something to eat.”

An advertisement for the Durand and Son grocery store in New Jersey’s Mount Holly News of 27 October 1914 alludes to the practice using both treat and trick, although not in combination with each other:

HALLOWE’EN
The time when all the Spirits and Fairies of another world seem to come to earth and revel in their pranks and tricks upon us mortals.
Treat them kindly, give them something to eat and they will do you no harm.

This text is followed by a list of items, such as apples, pretzels, cider, dates, grapes, and nuts that can be purchased from Durand and Son to give to the little beggars to ward off damage.

The use of treat in combination with trick is first recorded on the prairies of Canada. Researcher Barry Popik turned up this use from the Edmonton Bulletin of 2 November 1922, in an article about how little vandalism had occurred a few nights earlier:

“TREAT OR TRICKS” HALLOWE’EN SLOGAN WAS OUT OF PLACE
“Treat up or tricks,” the ultimatum on the part of young Canada which is usually associated with Hallowe’en was on Tuesday evening apparently in the same classification as those proclamations broadcasted to the Turks—no one took particular notice of it.

The Leader-Post of Regina, Saskatchewan alludes to the practice without actually stating it on 2 November 1923:

Hallowe’en passed off very quietly here. “Treats” not “tricks” were the order of the evening.

And the Saskatoon Daily Star does the same thing on the next day:

Hallowe’en was celebrated here in a lively fashion. Numerous parties were held throughout the town and the usual battalions of children covered all sections of the town demanding treats or else suffering the dire penalty of tricks for refusal.

The phrase trick or treat itself, used as the greeting at the door, appears in the Calgary Daily Herald (Alberta) on 3 November 1927:

Hallowe’en came and went and was observed most circumspectly in town, without the usual depredations. The greatest activity was manifested by the very young, who wandered in droves from door to door, heavily disguised and demanding “trick or treat.” To treat was to be untricked, and the youthful hold-up men soon returned home bowed down with treats.

And the Lethbridge Herald (Alberta) also uses the phrase the next day:

Hallowe’en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun. No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., much of which decorated the front street. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word “trick or treat” to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.

By 31 October 1932 we get a record of the phrase being used in the United States. From the Morning Oregonian of that date:

“Trick or Treat?” the youthful mischief-maker will say this evening, probably, as he rings the doorbell of a neighbor. Or he may not stop to warn the innocent householder, but will proceed to soap his windows, steal his door mat, uproot his precious shrubs or place his garbage can on the front porch. That is, the youngster will behave in this manner if his parents turn him loose to express himself by having “a little childish fun,” and if the policeman on the beat doesn’t happen to show the lad the difference between fun and vandalism.

And by 1938 the practice itself is being labeled trick or treat. From the Los Angeles Times of 30 October 1938:

“Trick or treat!” is the Halloween hijacking game hundreds of Southern California youngsters will play tomorrow night as they practice streamlined versions of traditional Allhallows Eve pranks.
The preparations are simple: a bar of soap, some old films and a couple of Times funny papers clipped into confetti. From house to house the boys and girls will travel, punching doorbells with nerve-jangling peals.

But the practice was not yet universally recognized, as can be seen from a pair of notes in the journal American Notes and Queries from the early 1940s. From the March 1942 issue answering a question about beggar’s night:

The local equivalent here (Decatur, Illinois) is “Trick or treat.” The custom is the same: children masked and in costume knock at front doors and greet the host with “Trick or treat!” (in a somewhat disguised voice). The proposal is, obviously, a mild kind of blackmail in which—whatever the motives—the treats are always forthcoming!

And answering the same query in November 1944 (remember, things were slower before the internet):

I had never heard of "Beggars' Night" until I saw it "in action" on Halloween this year at Tacoma, Washington, where, I am told, it has been going on for some time. After dark, children ring doorbells and present their "Trick or treat" ultimatum.

But in the late 1940s and 1950s the practice became universal across the United States under the rubric of trick or treat, although beggar’s night still hangs on as a regional appellation. And since then, it has spread outside of North America as well.

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Sources:

American Notes & Queries, 1.12, March 1942, 191–92. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———, 4.8, November 1944, 125. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. beggar’s night, n.

“Events of Eliot.” The Portsmouth Herald (New Hampshire), 19 October 1909, 1. NewspaperArchive.com.

Fuessle, Newton A. “The Beggar’s Big Night” (syndicated). Illustrated Sunday Magazine of the Gazette Times (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), 19 September 1909, 9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Hallowe’en” (advertisement). Mount Holly News (New Jersey), 27 October 1914, 2. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.

“Hallowe’en Celebrations.” Saskatoon Daily Star (Saskatchewan), 3 November 1923, 24. Newspapers.com.

“Halloween Pranks Plotted by Youngsters of Southland.” Los Angeles Times, 30 October 1938, A8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“High River News.” Calgary Daily Herald (Alberta), 3 November 1927, 22. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Madisonia.” Evening Democrat (Fort Madison, Iowa), 27 October 1933, 4. NewspaperArchive.com.

Miller, Marian. “Halloween Jollity Within Reason Need [sic].” The Morning Oregonian, 31 October 1932, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. trick, n.

Popik, Barry. “Trick or Treat.” The Big Apple, 18 September 2008.

“Rouleau L.O.B.A. Bid Farewell to Mrs. M’Ewen.” The Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan), 2 November 1923, 3. Newspapers.com.

“Special Cops Will Keep Close Watch Hallowe’en Gangs.” Evening Democrat (Fort Madison, Iowa), 31 October 1924, 8. NewspaperArchive.com.

“‘Treat or Tricks’ Hallowe’en Slogan Was Out of Place.” Edmonton Bulletin (Alberta), 2 November 1922, 6. Newspapers.com.

“‘Trick or Treat’ Is Demand.” Lethbridge Herald (Alberta), 4 November 1927, 5. NewspaperArchive.com.

Photo Credit: Don Scarborough, 1979. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.