[Ads-l] Antedating of "The Establishment"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Here is what Henry Fairlei wrote about Emerson's use of the term "the
establishment".

Date: October 19, 1968
Periodical: The New Yorker
Article: Onward and Upward with the Arts: Evolution of a Term
Author: Henry Fairlie
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1968/10/19/evolution-of-a-term

[Begin excerpt - double check of OCR errors]
One weekend, I was casually reading a lecture on “The Conservative”
that Emerson gave on December 9, 1841, at the Masonic Temple in
Boston. The lecture takes the form of an imaginary dialogue between a
reformer and a conservative, and Emerson identified the conservative
as “an upholder of the establishment, a man of many virtues.” Emerson
then has the conservative  describe how Friar Bernard set out from his
cell on Mount Cenis to “reform the corruption of mankind” but was
overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of the rich families he met
in Rome, and returned home crying, “...these Romans, whom I prayed God
to destroy, are lovers, they are lovers; what can I do? ”

It is a classic description of the influence that the bland and
insinuating manners of an “Establishment” are supposed to have. “The
reformer concedes that these mitigations exist,” Emerson continued
dryly, and that “if he proposed comfort, he should take sides with the
establishment.” The palm, I think, has to be given to Emerson, since
his use could only be secular. And there the search for origins may be
brought to an end.
[End excerpt]

On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 12:15 PM Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Kind of like Emerson's "do your thing" (1841).
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 8:32 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> > The OED's first use for _establishment_, 8.b., is dated 1923.  This is the
> > sense: "a social group exercising power generally, or within a given field
> > or institution, by virtue of its traditional superiority, and by the use
> > esp. of tacit understandings and often a common mode of speech, and having
> > as a general interest the maintenance of the status quo."  The OED entry
> > identifies a 1955 article by Henry Fairlie as the locus classicus of this
> > sense.
> >
> >
> > Fairlie himself later (in the New Yorker, 19 Oct. 1968) traced use of "the
> > establishment" in this sense to a 9 Dec. 1841 lecture by Ralph Waldo
> > Emerson, titled "The Conservative."
> >
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org