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Origin and history of Boston

Boston

U.S. city, 1630, named for the town in Lincolnshire, which sent many Puritan settlers to early New England. The name is said to be literally "Botolph's Stone," probably from the name of some Anglo-Saxon landowner (Old English Botwulf). The Boston Massacre was March 5, 1770; three civilians killed, two mortally wounded. The Boston Tea Party (1824) took place on Dec. 16, 1773 (see tea party). Related: Bostonian.

Entries linking to Boston

tea party(n.)

also tea-party, 1772, "social event at which tea and other refreshments are served," from tea + party (n.). Jocular colloquial alternative tea-fight is attested by 1849.

Political references to tea party all trace to the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773 (that jocular name for it is attested by 1824), in which radicals in Massachusetts colony boarded British ships carrying tea and threw the product into Boston Harbor in protest against the home government's taxation policies.

It since has been a model for libertarian political actions in the U.S. (generally symbolic), including citizen gatherings begun in early 2009 to protest government spending.

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    Trends of Boston

    adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/ with a 7-year moving average; ngrams are probably unreliable.

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    hub
    Holmes, and originally especially of Boston. Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system....[Holmes, "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table"] [E]verybody knows that Boston used to be called the Hub, meaning the hub of...
    scrod
    A Boston brahmin is on a business trip to Philadelphia....In search of dinner, and hungry for that Boston favorite, broiled scrod, he hops into a cab and asks the driver, "My good...
    caucus
    perhaps from an Algonquian word caucauasu "counselor, elder, adviser" in the dialect of Virginia, or from the Caucus Club of Boston...Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America," Boston..., 1816] The word caucus, and its derivative caucusing, are often used in Boston....
    body-builder
    Roberts, superintendent of the Boston Y.M.C.A. gymnasium. See body (n.) + build (v.)....
    Celtic
    The Boston basketball team was founded 1946....
    westernize
    Peck, "A New Guide for Emigrants to the West," Boston, 1837] In reference to Europeanizing of Middle Eastern or Asian places...
    gonzo
    Thompson in 1972 said he got it from editor Bill Cardosa and explained it as "some Boston word for weird, bizarre."...
    a.m.
    also a.m., 1762 in reference to hours, an abbreviation of Latin ante meridiem "before noon" (q.v.). Synonymous with "morning" by 1776. AM as a type of radio wave broadcast, 1921, abbreviation of amplitude modulation (see amplitude). Affixed to a name, an abbreviation of artium ma
    am
    first-person singular present indicative of be (q.v.); Old English eom "to be, to remain," (Mercian eam, Northumbrian am), from Proto-Germanic *izm(i)-, from PIE *esmi- (source also of Old Norse emi, Gothic im, Hittite esmi, Old Church Slavonic jesmi, Lithuanian esmi), first-pers
    the
    definite article, late Old English þe, nominative masculine form of the demonstrative pronoun and adjective. After c.950, it replaced earlier se (masc.), seo (fem.), þæt (neuter), and probably represents se altered by the th- form which was used in all the masculine oblique cases

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