Words at Play : 10 Words That Are Older Than You Might Think
Earliest Known Usage:
1902
Example:
"Didn't we use to work the Frisco beaches together? And follow the ponies up and down the East Coast? And wiretap ... and do every breed of crooked work a guy could grift on?" – Arthur Stringer, Saturday Evening Post, February 8, 1913
About the Word:
For almost as long as we have had the means of having conversations through electrical signals we have had people who would like to eavesdrop on those conversations. The noun wiretap has been in use since 1902, in the early days of the telephone. The gerund wire-tapping has been in use since the 1870s, when it was used to describe the practice of illicitly recording telegraph messages.
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