Derivtion of "let on"

Posted by ESC on January 10, 2005

In Reply to: Derivtion of "let on" posted by Ron Baynes on January 09, 2005

: To settle a literary argument, does anyone know where I can find out whether the phrase "let on" (for reveal or disclose) would have been in use in the 19th century? Thank

The older folks in my part of West Virginia (who would be 100+ if they were still with us) used that phrase. So I believe it would date back to the 1800s. "Don't let on that you know about it."

One reference has a slightly different meaning -- to pretend. "She let on like it belong to her." "Smoky Mountain Voices: A Lexicon of Southern Appalachian Speech Based on the Research of Horace Kephart," edited by Harold J. Farwell Jr., and J. Karl Nicholas (University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky., 1993).