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Some claim that its name was coined because it originally had four members; what American collegiate athletic grouping is it?



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Answer: the Ivy League

So called because of the Roman numeral iv in ivy .

This is a false etymology.

According to wordorigins.org, "the term was first used in 1937 by the New York Herald-Tribune sportswriter Caswell Adams in reference to the unofficial conference of teams also known as the Old Ten. The teams were Army, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Navy, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. In 1940, Army and Navy dropped out of the association and the membership has remained the same ever since."

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