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The origin of the word SPELUNKING

Автор: Ioannis Zenas
Дата: 7 Sep 2006


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The origin of the word SPELUNKING
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Description: 7 Sep. 2006.

While I was looking for something else in my library, I ran across the following note about the origin of the word SPELUNK.
It was posted to Caver's Digest e-mail list in June 1997.
I've OCRed it from paper copy.
Bill Mixon.

"Although its use may indeed date to antiquity, in America it seems to have come into existence in the 20th century. More specifically, as Mixon notes, it seems to have been popularized by Clay Perry in his 1939 NEW ENGLAND'S BURIED TREASURE and his 1948 UNDERGROUND EMPIRE, which are books about the caves of, respectively, New England and New York. Perry was a newspaperman and often more concerned with writing a good story than getting all the facts straight, but his books still serve as a basic reference for Northeastern caving. Somewhere in one or both of those books I believe Perry credits Roger Johnson with inventing the term SPELUNK but I can't find the reference right offhand. However, I have a carbon copy of a letter from Roger Johnson, of Springfield, Mass., written to the late Pete Hauer, then editor of Boston Grotto's MASS. CAVER, and mailed to me on July 25, 1966. In the 1930s Johnson was Chief Spelunker of the New England Spelunkers Grotto, according to Perry. Johnson discussed a Vermont cave I'd written an article on and which he had visited in 1928 with his famous brother Irving (who sailed seven times around the world) and others. Near the end of the letter Johnson says: " By the way I was the one who invented the words spelunking and spelunker partly because my crawling around in the little New England caves for the fun of it did not seem worthy of the name Speleologist.".
Chuck Porter.

via Bill Mixon | Texas Cavers Mailing list.

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