In the US, several states have panhandle regions, but as nearly as I can tell, Oklahoma is the only state that could even remotely be described as pan shaped. Did much older states, such as Florida and West Virginia, refer to their salients as panhandles before the existence of Oklahoma? If so, who first referred to their salient as a panhandle?
First evidence of usage is apparently Virginia in 1856.
The only one I ever heard is Texas. And for years it never dawned on me that, well, yeah, I can see it, if you like your pans unbalanced and likely to break your wrist.
[Me, I’d call that Upstate Texas…see current thread…]
Interesting. I seem to hear it most with Florida, but am aware of OK and TX, too.
Note that the “Virginia panhandle” in 1856 would have referred to a different region than it would today. In 1856, the land we now know as “West Virginia” was still a part of Virginia proper, and the “Virginia panhandle” would have meant the narrow strip including Wheeling. Nowadays, if you talk about the “Virginia panhandle”, people would probably think you meant the far western part of the state around Abingdon.
I’ve got 1845:
And West Virginia has two panhandles: the northern one including Wheeling (which used to be the Virginia panhandle), and the eastern one including Harpers Ferry.
I can’t back this up, but when they refer to the Texas panhandle, they’re referring to that area of Texas near the Oklahoma panhandle.
If you read that cite more carefully, the author is referring to a report from 1898(Mooney) describing the 1845 trip. Mooney used the tern “panhandle,” not the 1845 journal.
There are two earlier cites now in the OED rather than 1856. 1846, still referring to the part of (West Virginia).
Of course. Is anyone claiming otherwise?
Ngrams appears to be finding some earlier than that, but I may be mistaken about the actual publication date. Does this one check out? (1838):
Interestingly, there’s another common name for this sort of thing. It’s sometimes called a “salient.” I never heard that name before:
Wendell, see OP.
Nope. That one is around the 1870s. Common problem when the scanned volumes include multiple years.
To be honest, I’d never heard of the term either. When I googled panhandle, the wiki redirected me to salient.
Yeah, you’re right, Leo Bloom, I didn’t read the OP carefully.
We’re among friends. You can call me Leo. And that’s Leo, not Leo, BTW.