phenomemon... du duhhh du-du-duh!

August 2, 2005 2:13 PM

When did the word 'phenom' become an accepted way to describe sport prodigies in North American news?
posted by humuhumu to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total)

I don't know about the term, but I know that there was an ABC sitcom in 1993 called Phenom about a tennis one; I seem to remember that the term seemed to gain prominence a bit before then -- that seemed to be about the time when I started hearing "phenom" everywhere, maybe a year before the show. (Although, I am about as far as you can get from a sports fan, so...)
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 2:16 PM on August 2, 2005

According to the OED, 1895:

phenom, n. U.S. colloq. = PHENOMENON n. 3; esp. an unusually gifted person, a prodigy.

1895 W. C. GORE in Inlander Nov. 64 Phenom.., phenomenon. Something out of the ordinary. 1950 in Wentworth & Flexner Dict. Amer. Slang (1960) 385/1 Sawyer's two other 24-year-old [baseball] phenoms. 1976 National Observer (U.S.) 28 Feb. 16/2 The kid was a local celebrity; some would say a phenom. 1986 New Yorker 16 June 121/1 He has a series of run-ins with a militant black rookie phenom. 1991 Sports Illustr. May 58/2 Yankee scout Bill Essick took off in the same direction to look at Vaughan, the shortstop phenom.

posted by grouse at 2:20 PM on August 2, 2005

Well, I guess the earliest written reference to it in a sports context is 1950, but since that is actually in another dictionary, it must have been in fairly wide usage before that point.
posted by grouse at 2:22 PM on August 2, 2005

Best answer: Used in sports, it's definitely much older than 1950. I found the following citation with just a few minutes of searching. A more thorough search of all the relative archives will no doubt antedate it.

1890 Fort Wayne (Ind.) Sentinel (July 21) col. 3, p. 2: "It was understood to-day that Gray, the 'six-fingered phenom' who pitched for Anderson, had been secured by Manager Meyer. Gray was to join the Fort Wayne club at Peru to-day."
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:00 PM on August 2, 2005

...thorough search of all the relevant archives...
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:00 PM on August 2, 2005

Mo Nickels: you have a rare chance to report a previous reference to the OED. :-)
posted by grouse at 6:59 AM on August 3, 2005