"I like dancing. At the disco. I want blisters. You're my leader. I wanna' ride on a white horse. I want to ride on a white horse."
The earliest written instance of the word disco mentioned in the Oxford English dictionary is in a sentence from a 1964 issue of Playboy: "Los Angeles has emerged with the biggest and brassiest of the discos."1
Disco was originally simply a clipped form of discotheque, from French discothèque, meaning "a nightclub" --itself an alteration of Italian discoteca, which meant "a record library," from Latin discus, meaning "disc," and biblioteca, meaning "library."2
Discothèques existed in France for thirty years before journalists associated the term with American funk music. I like to picture a nicotine-stained dance hall right after World War II and a man in back hiding in a mountain of worn records --the best jazz library in France.
And not those shiny vinyl records, either. I mean records like 78 rpm hubcaps. The dust-heavy artifacts of your grandparents' house.
1"disco." Oxford English Dictionary. 2008. Oxford University Press. 25 Jan 2009. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50065253
2"discotheque."American Heritage College Dictionary. 4th ed. 2008. Houghton Mifflin.
The earliest written instance of the word disco mentioned in the Oxford English dictionary is in a sentence from a 1964 issue of Playboy: "Los Angeles has emerged with the biggest and brassiest of the discos."1
Disco was originally simply a clipped form of discotheque, from French discothèque, meaning "a nightclub" --itself an alteration of Italian discoteca, which meant "a record library," from Latin discus, meaning "disc," and biblioteca, meaning "library."2
Discothèques existed in France for thirty years before journalists associated the term with American funk music. I like to picture a nicotine-stained dance hall right after World War II and a man in back hiding in a mountain of worn records --the best jazz library in France.
And not those shiny vinyl records, either. I mean records like 78 rpm hubcaps. The dust-heavy artifacts of your grandparents' house.
1"disco." Oxford English Dictionary. 2008. Oxford University Press. 25 Jan 2009. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50065253
2"discotheque."American Heritage College Dictionary. 4th ed. 2008. Houghton Mifflin.
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