I was reading some newspaper articles from the 1950s and they always referred to the local council men as “solons”. I see that “lawmaker” is indeed a definition for solon but I don’t think I have ever seen it before. Guess it fell out of fashion. USA newspapers if it matters.
I’d not heard the word before; Google indicates that “solon” directly comes from Solon, a statesman in Athens.
Here in Chicago, members of the City Council are known as “aldermen” (and “alderwomen”), though, in recent years, local media have been using the shorter, non-gendered “alder”/”alders.”
I’ve seen that usage in older books; I suspect it’s somewhat ironic.
Here’s a recent headline using the word:
https://businessmirror.com.ph/2025/07/28/returning-solon-files-10-priority-bills-in-20th-congress/
Sacramento Solons minor league baseball team was once a thing, of course appropriate for the city’s standing as the state Capitol.
Solon is a city in Ohio.
I’ve seen it used before, although it’s been quite a while. But almost always for Senators, not local council members.
Are these articles all from one particular newspaper? I have heard the term but didn’t think it was very common.
Did they all have the same byline; perhaps some wannabe poet overly fond of his thesaurus?
Going from newspaper archives, it appears to have been dropping in usage thru the 1970s, then took a precipitous drop of about 75% in the 1980s.
It was a very common synonym for “legislator” when I was a kid, so 60s-70s. Many headlines about “Solons pass [whatever]”.
I’ve certainly heard / read of it used to refer to federal or state legislators. I don’t think I’ve heard it used for city- or county-level officials. Then again I grew up in a city of then ~50K in a county of then maybe 2M. Calling e.g. Chicago Aldermen “solons” might make more sense; they each certainly represent more people than small-state federal congressional reps do.
It’s been decades since I’ve seen the word in use.
Chicago has 50 alderpeople and a population of 2.7 million. 2.7 million divided by 50 is way less than the population of even the smallest State.
Wow. I had no idea. Thank you.
Los Angeles County has 5 elected “supervisors” for a population of not quite 10M people. That’s the prototypical major metro-blob I’m used to. Los Angeles city has ~4M residents and 15 “councilmen”.
Back in the pre-Internet days, newspaper editors had to conserve space at all costs, especially in headlines.
Consider:
SOLON
SENATOR
ALDERMAN
LAWMAKER
LEGISLATOR
COUNCILMAN
REPRESENTATIVE
This is also why we had FDR, Ike, JFK, LBJ, etc. instead of ROOSEVELT, EISENHOWER, KENNEDY, JOHNSON, etc.
NIXON was short enough not to need abbreviation.
And yet he was abbreviated…
Yeah, the Lorain Journal from Lorain, Ohio. The dates were from1943 not the 1950s.
I have never seen that term, other than in references to ancient Athens.
Maybe it was a local usage? Certainly not known in the UK.
Name-checked in “Moon Over Parma” (the first opening theme from The Drew Carey Show):
We’re goin’ bowlin’
So don’t lose her in Solon
Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, the local newspaper in Green Bay often used “RUSS” in headlines, as shorthand for “Russian” or “Soviet,” probably for that exact reason.
We used to see the term constantly in the Pacific Daily News, a Gannet paper published on Guam, in the late 1980s. I haven’t seen it much before or since, but when I’m playing Scrabble or Boggle I am glad to have it in my verbal repertoire.
Indeed. But then, newspaper headline writers have the even handier “MPs” to hand.