Ever Wonder Where We
Got the Term “Swan Dive?”
See if you can find a photo of a swan diving.
Swans don't do it. Swallows do.
This photo was taken by Wallace G. Levison, a Life magazine photographer, in Brooklyn, New York, on June 26, 1886, and subsequently published in Life magazine.
The boy's name was Jamie Swan.
I can find no source that links this photo to the origin of the term “swan dive,” but neither can I find a documented use of the term prior to the publication of this image.
I say the photo triggered the expression.
What say Ye?