Editing Deadpan (section)

==Etymology==
The term ''deadpan'' first emerged early in the 20th century, as a [[compound word]] (sometimes spelled as two words) combining "dead" and "pan" (a [[slang]] term for the face). It appeared in print as early as 1915, in an article about a former baseball player named [[Gene Woodburn]] written by his former manager [[Roger Bresnahan]]. Bresnahan described how Woodburn used his skill as a ventriloquist to make his manager and others think they were being heckled from the stands. Woodburn, wrote Bresnahan, "had a trick of what the actors call 'the dead pan.' He never cracked a smile and would be the last man you would suspect was working a trick."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Bresnahan|first=Roger|date=20 Jan 1915|title=Roger Bresnahan's Own Tale|page=10|work=490 Washington Street}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Deadpan – Caught in the Web of Words|url=https://etymology.kenliss.com/blog/?p=490|access-date=2021-11-13|language=en}}</ref>

[[George M. Cohan]], in a 1908 interview, had alluded to dead pans without using the actual term "deadpan". Cohan, after returning from a trip to London, told an interviewer that "the time is ripe for a manager to take over about a dozen American chorus girls and wake up the musical comedy game. The English chorus girls are dead–their pans are cold.”<ref>{{Cite news|last=Darnton|first=Charles|date=1 Feb 1908|title=George M. Cohan Froze in London, But in Paris–Ah!–He Managed to Thaw Out|page=3|work=New York World}}</ref>

The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' cites a 1928 ''[[The New York Times|New York Times]]'' article as having the first appearance of the term in print.<ref name="oed">''Oxford English Dictionary''. [http://oed.com/view/Entry/47677 "dead-pan, adj., n., adv., and v."] Second edition, 1989; online version December 2011. accessed 17 February 2012. First published in ''A Supplement to the OED I'', 1972</ref> That article, a collection of film slang compiled by writer and theatrical agent [[Frank J. Wilstach]], defines "dead pan" as "playing a role with expressionless face, as, for instance, the work of Buster Keaton."<ref>{{Cite news|date=11 Mar 1928|title=Slang of Film Men|page=6 (Section 8)|work=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1928/03/11/94127931.html?pageNumber=112|access-date=13 Nov 2021}}</ref> There were several other uses of the term, in theater and in sports, between the 1915 Bresnahan article and the 1928 article in the ''Times''.<ref name=":0" />

The usage of deadpan as a [[verb]] ("to speak, act, or utter in a deadpan manner; to maintain a dead pan") is recorded at least as far back as 1942.<ref name="oed" />