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:
“... my last work is no sooner on the stands than letters come, suggesting a subject. The grandmothers of strangers are crying from the grave, it seems, for literary recognition; it is bewildering, the number of salty grandfathers, aunts and uncles that languish unappreciated.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“I went to a literary gathering once.... The place was filled with people who looked as if they had been scraped up out of drains. The ladies ran to draped plush dresses—for Art; to wreaths of silken flowerets in the hair—for Femininity; and, somewhere between the two adornments, to chain-drive pince-nez—for Astigmatism. The gentlemen were small and somewhat in need of dusting.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)