»-licious

Yet another reason to love the Language Log: its explanation of the alicious suffix drew my attention to the following quotation.

Going back further still, the American Periodicals Series reveals a punny example of the -(V)licious formation while it was still very much in its infancy. This poor excuse for a joke appeared in the New York Observer and Chronicle of Jan. 3, 1878, in the "Odds & Ends" column:

There are beautiful warm soda springs in Colorado, and people who go bathing in them at once exclaim: "Oh! but this is soda-licious!"