Google's ngram viewer tells a slightly different story of its explosion of use during WWI.
My favorite OED example, for a number of reasons, is this one:
I would never have guessed that "newlyweds" was vanishingly rare before the mid-19-teens. The OED claims rarity merely before the mid-nineteenth century, with instances from 1593 and 1846, but
My favorite OED example, for a number of reasons, is this one:
1918 Cosmopolitan Feb. 90/2 A Newlywed can live on Marmalade for about three months.
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Edited at 2012-03-17 06:45 pm (UTC)
Google ngram