well-traveled snowclone

Thu Oct 21 17:04:14 UTC 2010

Aside from the matter of the pictograph, in the Modern Proverbs files we have this for the English proverb "A crisis is an opportunity" (it might be noteworthy that the saying occurs in a "missionary" magazine):

1904  C. P. Middleton, “The Present Crisis,” _Women’s Missionary Magazine_ (of the United Free Church of Scotland) 37: 286:  “A crisis is an opportunity; and our chief concern should be lest [sic] we should fail to use this opportunity aright.”

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Ben Zimmer [bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 12:27 PM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  An old business snowclone involves the alleged danger/opportunity or
> risk/opportunity duality in a single character. Another version that
> made it into Tom Wolfe's novels is that the Chinese word for "crisis" is
> composed of two symbols--for danger and for opportunity.
>
> Language Log had covered this before:
>
> http://bit.ly/c9HFXl
>
> with a nod to a more direct debunking
>
> http://bit.ly/cWaoWs
>
> This morning, on Colorado Public Radio, Tom Tancredo invented yet
> another version:
>
> "Chinese symbol for opportunity and problem is the same symbol."

For historical background on the spread of the trope, both in its
"crisis = danger + opportunity" and "crisis = opportunity" variants,
see my Language Log post:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004343.html