Each week, I’ve been inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research. Here is the latest round.
Fritz Gheen asked:
Who is the Stuart in Stuart’s Law of Retroaction: It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
I have never heard this associated with a Stuart. It is often attributed to pioneer computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper, famous in etymological circles as the pseudo-coiner of the computer “bug.” The earliest I have found it credited to Hopper is in 1984, but “It is easier to get forgiveness than permission” appears earlier in Arthur Bloch, Murphy’s Law Book Two (1980). Can any of you Google Books / Google News / Newspaperarchive jockeys out there find any versions before 1980?
Nina Gilbert asked:
How and when did the word “awesome” become so trivial and ubiquitous? I wonder if a TV character used it, and then it exploded – first to teenagers, and then to other demographics. OED cites start around 1980, but they’re not first uses. The Official Preppy Handbook, for example, already defines “awesome” as “terrific, great” in 1980.
It is a privilege to respond to the great Nina Gilbert. Nina is a music teacher at The Webb Schools, Claremont, California, and was a stalwart of the late, lamented Stumpers listserve (now continuing in a diminished form as Project Wombat). Nina, Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1989) had this to say:
The use of _awesome_ as a generalized term of approval is relatively recent … _Awesome_ has been part of the standard hyperbole of sports broadcasting and writing for several years. It may have been popularized by professional football broadcases; when _great_ came to be applied freely to plays and players of average to good quality, _awesome_ was rushed in to supply the idea of being better than average. The use of the word in sportswriting is not quite so recent as you might imagine … Such use is, however, far from limited to the world of sports. Howard 1984 says that preppies favor the word. … we do have evidence of its use in the speech of young people … This use, which appears to be chiefly oral, often attracts the intensifier _totally_.
Webster’s goes on to speculate that the decline in the use of the word _awful_ in its meaning of “inspiring awe” contributed to the use of _awesome_ to mean “inspiring awe,” but that _awesome_ in this sense is now following a similar path to the one _awful_ did a century ago.
Glossolalia Black asked:
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” It is attributed to Plato on this little thing I have up in my office, but I was told by a friend that it wasn’t him.”
Glossolalia, this sounds anachronistic for Plato by almost 2500 years. I haven’t researched it, but I invite the aforementioned Google Books / Google News / Newspaperarchive jockeys to see how far back they can trace this one.
Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?
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The phrase “awesome” danced well but only had a minor role with the preppies in the early 80s. It wasn’t overwhelmingly abused until Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in the late 80s. Then it became not only an abused written word by the mainstream, it had to be orally said with the property Keanu Reeve’s drawl and inflection. Almost a yell… with the first syllable “a” pronounced for at least 3 seconds. Then….THEN it became a word to hate.
Awesome was widely used by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they predate Bill and Ted. I always thought it was west coast surfer lingo.
Maybe Wayne & Garth (Wayne’s World) also helped to trivialize the word “awesome.”
Hi. Thanks for the challenge on an interesting quotation. There is a citation dated circa 1972 that credits Tom McConnell with the saying about forgiveness and permission.
Cite: Circa 1972, School Management, Page 9, Volume 16, A. L. Iger. (Google Books snippet view only. Unverified.)
To ride herd on this overpowering operation it is not unusual for Tom McConnell to “drop by in the middle of the night.” However, he and his staff thrive on the challenge. He sums up his attitude with the statement, “It’s easier to get forgiveness than to get permission.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=FoQVAAAAIAAJ&q=forgiveness#search_anchor
The dates given by Google Books are unreliable but this citation passes some sanity checks. Volume 16 is dated 1972 according to a University catalog. Searching within the text indicates that 1973 and 1974 are future dates. I will ask a friend to check it on paper unless something better is found.
I like the southern version of the forgiveness/permission quote: “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
I thought “awesome” took off with “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” with Sean Penn’s character. I think it was also on some of the posters for the movie. I think Reeve’s based his character on Penn’s.
Didn’t the Ninja turtles use “awesome” well before Bill and Ted?
“Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile,” please.
A couple of weeks ago, I heard a 17th Century bawdy song on the BBC, which included the line “GIve ‘em an inch and they’ll take an ell.”
This got me to wondering – has this proverb always existed in a variety of forms? Or did the composer merely change units in the song in order to get a better rhyme? (Which would be yet another argument against universal adoption of the metric system!)