Literary Use
John Clare (English peasant poet) wrote with his own spelling and no punctuation: he complained c.1820-1830 to his editors that people could understand him, and that he wouldn't use "that awkward squad of colon, semi-colon, comma, and full stop" (source - display in Clare's cottage, Helpston.)
In Villette (pub. 1853) Charlotte Bronte writes of M. Paul Emanuel: "Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders."
In Chapter 16 of Our Mutual Friend (1864–65), Charles Dickens describes the character Sloppy as " Full-Private Number One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life."
Norman Cameron ends one of his poems - Forgive me, sire - with the words 'awkward squad', which plays with the above definition. This would have been written at least about 50 years before the current use.
Read more about this topic: Awkward Squad
Famous quotes containing the word literary:
“Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Carlyle, to adopt his own classification, is himself the hero as literary man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)