Word of the day: commuter

[Nancy, January 24, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

Nancy’s new train whistles, smokes, goes choo-choo — it does (in Bushmiller Bold) EVERYTHING.

I was surprised to see commuter in use in 1950 — I would have guessed that it was a later invention. I’m even more surprised to see that the word (“Originally U.S.”) dates from the mid-nineteenth century. The first Oxford English Dictionary citation is from 1865 (The Atlantic Monthly ):

Two or three may be styled commuters’ roads, running chiefly for the accommodation of city business-men with suburban residences.

Pre-“traffic and weather on the eights,” there were commuters.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[I would have placed commuter in the 1970s, perhaps because that’s when I became a commuter when attending college. There was much consternation about Fordham at Rose Hill becoming a commuter campus.]