History
The term rubbernecking was an Americanism coined in the 1890s to refer to tourists. H.L. Mencken said the word rubberneck is "almost a complete treatise on American psychology" and "one of the best words ever coined".
By 1909 rubbernecking was used to describe the wagons, automobiles and buses used in tours around American cities, and through their Chinatowns. The tours included a megaphone-wielding individual offering commentary on the urban landscape. Chinese Rubbernecks was the title of a 1903 film.
One writer described the "out-of-towners" stretching their necks to see New York while having misinformation shouted at them, and artist John Sloan depicted them as geese in a 1917 etching called Seeing New York. Hawkers, touts and steerers were used to market the rubbernecking tours, also known as "gape wagons" or "yap wagons."
When phone lines were shared as "party lines" the term rubbernecking applied to someone who listened in on the conversation of others.
The term "rubberneck" is used in Ireland to refer to a person acting in a foolish or silly manner.
Read more about this topic: Rubbernecking
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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the truth of the new is never on the news
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the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
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