Maureen Dowd, “Watch Out Below!!!” (New York Times op/ed, Dec. 16, 2012)
The BBC examined the etymology of the phrase of the moment. The lexicographer Ben Zimmer discovered that an 1893 editorial in The Chicago Tribune warned: “The free silver shriekers are striving to tumble the United States over the same fiscal precipice.”
Zimmer traced the first use of “fiscal cliff” to the property section of The New York Times in 1957, in an article about people overextending their finances to buy their first home. Ben Bernanke imprinted the term on the public consciousness last February, pointing ominously toward Jan. 1.
Read the rest here. (Related Word Routes column)