英语词汇four-letter man的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

four-letter man. Four-letter man for “an excellent athlete” originated in college sports and originally meant someone who earned a letter in football, baseball, basketball, and track. Since its first use in early 20th-century America it has also come to be slang for a stupid person, from the four letters of dumb, and a contemptible person, from the four letters of shit. Amos Alonso Stagg, longtime football coach at the University of Chicago, was the first to award monograms of the first letter of a school’s name to athletes and these monograms were being called letters by 1916. Stagg himself was called “the grand old man of football.”

词汇	four-letter man
词源	four-letter man. Four-letter man for “an excellent athlete” originated in college sports and originally meant someone who earned a letter in football, baseball, basketball, and track. Since its first use in early 20th-century America it has also come to be slang for a stupid person, from the four letters of dumb, and a contemptible person, from the four letters of shit. Amos Alonso Stagg, longtime football coach at the University of Chicago, was the first to award monograms of the first letter of a school’s name to athletes and these monograms were being called letters by 1916. Stagg himself was called “the grand old man of football.”
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