Word: chug
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Such onomatopoetic creations should be judged by their success rather than by the dictionaries. In this particular case credit is due to a typesetter who set "chuff" for "chug." An able proofreader, quick to sense the merit of the "new word," let it stand...
...Manhattan baby was the U. S. automobile industry, swaddled for its first show. The 31 cars exhibited came so far from filling the spacious Garden that an oval track was erected on the floor, around which the "horseless carriages" chug-chugged through their nursery paces to the mixed distrust and astonishment of gaping throngs. Up on the roof a demonstration "hill" was constructed, and here many an adventurous blood with money to spend had the ride that sold him his first motor...
With every chug the yacht drew nearer to the squat boulder from whose eminence New England society finds itself able to look down. And when the helmsman at last ran to earth Captain Adolphus' pin, the President and Mrs. Coolidge disembarked " amid many direct descendants of the original Pilgrims,"; who were swelled by unabashed plebeians into "an enthusiastic crowd...