It's an exercise using a stretch band to simulate rowing a boat. I need to know how long the exercise, or the expression, has been around.

I use several techniques to determine whether a term is an oldie or a neologism. For instance, if I can't find a term in the usu online dictionaries, then I suspect it as recent

However, I'm not entirely satisfied with such crude methods. Of course I could do better at this if I had a vast library or could afford subscription online services. However, on a fixed income I'm pretty much stuck with the free strategies; while I hate to be bothering you guys every time I need a reading

Any suggestions appreciated--Thanks all

Dale's general "methodology" question is particularly timely for me, because one of my quote sources (Amazon search-inside-the-book) has recently changed in a way that makes it far less useful.

My usual sources are

• google-news: free
• Amazon as noted above: free, if you've bought $25 worth direct from Amazon -- not from one of their listers)
• OED: expensive, but may well be free through your library, with 24-hr access
• newspaperarchives.com: $50/year; more useful for finding antedatings than for recent usages
• findarticles.com: free.

Sometimes helpful, but each with its limitations, are Project Gutenberg (free), Proquest (many libraries have it), and GoogleBooks (free if you have a free gmail account).

Any other ideas you might provide, for Dale's purposes or mine, would be appreciated. Thanks!

wc: Thank you most kindly for those search tips, which I've ensconced among my Faves

I am interested in any such search facilities that come free

Incidentally, "band row" turns out to me one of many different kinds of "rows" using a resistance band. In all probability, therefore, the expr "band row" has been around for a very long time

I was disappointed as I had expected it to mean a fight between the members of a rock band

word: the Amazon search-inside-the-book is intriguing. To do a search of this kind, do you need to know the title of the book

Thanks again

Forgive me for bubbling this one back up, but in the meantime I wondder if anyone else has heard the usage; whether you consider it a neologism or merely the concatenation of two common exercise terms

Never heard of it.

ditto