Talk:Sunday girl

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Latest comment: 3 years ago by Colin M in topic obsolescence
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obsolescence[edit]

I've marked this term as obsolete rather than merely dated. I looked fairly thoroughly for recent uses, but the 1960 quote was the latest I could find. There are a couple later occurrences that are false positives. For example, 2019's The Sunday Girl, where the text makes it pretty clear that this is a pet name invented by a character in the book, rather than an invocation of the existing slang sense. Also the usual issues of sometimes flakey metadata on Google Books, as in this example, which is a work originally published in 1885 and republished in 2000.

I was struck by how much of a flash-in-the-pan this term was. I can find 0 instances before 1884, but suddenly there are around 10 occurrences on Google Books from 1884-1886. After 1900, the term is fairly rare, mostly appearing in song titles/lyrics (including many predating the Blondie song) and the names of horses and similar. Quite a short lifespan, especially for a pre-digital age! Colin M (talk) 22:37, 5 March 2021 (UTC)Reply