The term “wet blanket”, one might have supposed, is certainly an example of recent American slang, but it was used in Scotland more than a hundred years ago, and with exactly the meaning in which we use it today, one who puts a damper on anything, especially upon any jollity; one who emits gloom.
The expression was used in 1830 by the Scottish novelist, John Galt, in Lawrie Todd, or the Settlers in the Woods: “I have never felt such a wet blanket before or syne.”
But as this novel contains sketches of American frontier life, the author creates an illusion of American slang.
