1. A sail on a ship.
2. A hat. ("The trumpets call me to swagger in a cockd skyscraper & sword.")
3. A horse. ("The huntsmen..were all abroad.., trotting..down the road, on great nine-hand skyscrapers, nimble daisy-cutting nags.., and ponies no bigger than the learned one at Astley's.")
4. A person. ("I say, old sky-scraper, is it cold up there?")
5. A bicycle rider (on one of those old "penny farthing" bikes).
6. A tall tale. ("My yarn won't come so well after your sky-scrapers of love.")
7. A fly ball.
All those applications of the term are obsolete or rare. The overwhelmingly dominant meaning of "skyscraper" to refer to the buildings first appears in print in 1883.
I got interested in this subject after someone on Facebook complained about the look of the "pencil towers" in New York City. I didn't know the term "pencil towers," and I found this article in The Guardian (from last February): "Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich/The proposed 2022 skyline overlooking Central Park/An extreme concentration of wealth in a city where even the air is for sale has produced a new breed of needle-like tower." Needle-like. I wondered it "skyscraper" originally carried the meaning that the buildings were wounding the sky.
Poking up above the Manhattan skyline like etiolated beanpoles, they seem to defy the laws of both gravity and commercial sense. They stand like naked elevator shafts awaiting their floors, raw extrusions of capital piled up until it hits the clouds.I detect phallophobia. Damn those sky-scrapers of love!
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Old man lying by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by
Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load
And the buildings scrape the sky...
Those are really skinny penises.
Naked elevator shaft is apt. When you're in one of these buildings much of each floor feels used by the elevator.
They probably won't look quite as bad once many are built side by side. Like a row in a cornfield or something
"The huntsmen..were all abroad.., trotting..down the road, on great nine-hand skyscrapers, nimble daisy-cutting nags.., and ponies no bigger than the learned one at Astley's."
Nine-hand skyscrapers? My deerhound's about that tall. He's a very tall dog, but nine hands is a very, very short horse.
What's the date on that quote? A hand has been universally accepted to mean four inches, (the width of an average man's hand across the knuckles) since Henry VIII, if not long before.
Height is relative. He who claims the high ground is instinctively important. I remember the first time seeing Dallas at night. All the skyscrapers were outlined by neon lights so they could brag at night too. Texas is a flat place, so they love tallness.
One of these days, one of those things is going to fall over.
It already almost happened.
You can't spell "skyscraper" without "rape". Just saying.
Radio towers
Mountains
Redwood trees
Airplanes
Birds
Bridges
Weather balloons
Now I'll go look to see how far off I am.
great nine-hand skyscraper
Wait, isn't a "hand" only like 4 inches? So a horse that's 9 hands is 3 feet at the withers, basically a mini-horse.
Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air
But will you keep on building higher
'Til there's no more room up there?
- Cat Stevens
In NYC the market wants height and the zoning permits it, so you get the sky pencil buildings. I don’t see any need to agonize over it.
Problem is, no matter how high you live, you still have to exit onto the street below.
Come on, come on down, you got it in ya
Got to scrape the shit right off your shoes.
Sarcasm was hard to spot, way back in 1889.
Also, from 1794, a light sail at the top of a mast"
John Henry
Huck Finn calls them "skyscratchers."
I'm reading this book that has Huck Finn in LA (today)… on the run with an illegal immigrant (of course). But he screws up words...just like Huck always did.
The other one I really liked was "funicular war." And he gets mixed up with some wacked-out left-wing activists who want to start a "rebelution."
"Pencil towers" is almost as good.
How could a woman miss listing 5-inch-heel shoes? Google images of "skyscraper heels".
@gadfly
The question asked is about things called skyscraper BEFORE buildings, so shoes are not in that category. Also you’ve got skyscraper as an adjective which makes it a little different. Anyway, I only saw that in the dictionary and had never noticed it as a term. Not too interested in high heels and never have been.
There are also skyscraper ads on websites. I left that out because it’s after the date in question, 1883.
Skyscraper referring to buildings in 1883. The tallest building in the world in 1883 (perhaps, it wasn't finished yet) was City Hall in Philadelphia. I guess it's all about perspective.
4) is puerile. Obviously it refers to a TALL person!
And they're called pencil towers because they're preternaturally thin, as it is so hard to acquire land zoned for high rise building and because the air rights situation is so arcane.
"Skyscraper" is a racist word.
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