[PW] Anachronisms

[swguardian-wombat at yahoo.com]

The term "no clue" to mean "I'm baffled" is definatly no a child of the 1990s. My 
grandfather was fond of using it and from him, I picked it up long before the 1990s. 
   
  However, your play is set back in 1894 so I dare say you need proof of 
  it's use back then. First take a look at Charles Dcikens in 1868 and 
  then at 1886, 1890 and 1894 books which show that "no clue" was well 
  entrenched back then. The useage of the term predates Dickens.  
   
  "I have no knowledge of these secrets, and no clue to their meaning." 
Charles Dickens, ed., Martin Chuzzlewit (New York: Books, 1868) 721 
   
  "We have no clue as to which one he was reading." (p. 103) [footnote]
"There were so many ministers of the name Smith then settled in New 
  Hampshire, that we have no clue to the particular one then in East 
  Windsor." (p. 617) [footnote] 
Increase Tarbox N., ed., Diary of Thomas Robbins, D. D., 1796-1854, vol. 1 
(Boston: Thomas Todd Printer, 1886) 103, 617 
   
  "To the date of the temple we have no clue" 
Mythology & Monuments of Ancient Athens: Being a Translation of a 
  Portion of the 'Attica' of Pausanias, trans. Margaret De G. Verrall (London: 
  Macmillan, 1890) 36 
   
  He had no clue now as to what was going on" 
A. Conan Doyle, Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical 
  Life (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1894) 97 

"Fuller, Thomas (US - Washington D.C.)" <tfuller at DELOITTE.com> wrote:
  My theater is preparing to present, this summer, a new musical by Tony
nominee Peter Kellogg based on the life of Nellie Bly, the pathbreaking
newpaper reporter who worked for Joseph Pulitzer. I've been going over
the script, and a couple of things have caught my eye.

The purpose of this posting is to focus on one scene, where Nellie
writes to an "advice to the lovelorn" columnist. She writes to "Miss
Lonelyhearts" sometime before her 1894 marriage to Robert Seaman, and
signs her letter "No Clue".

<snip>

Question 2: Although "clueless" as a word dates at least to 1743, using
"no clue" to mean "I'm baffled" strikes my ear as a distinctly 1990's
trope. I feel about it the same way I felt when the Leonardo DiCaprio
character in TITANIC, early on, said "Hey, I'm involved" -- nobody would
have said that, in that context, in 1912. Anybody disagree?

-- Tom 

<snip>

-------------------------
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