query; "Winning Isn't Everything"

[Laurence Horn]

I got a call from someone in the Midwest who vaguely recalled a
survey conducted by someone in the Yale Department of Linguistics
aimed at determining the "ten most powerful English words".  He
remembered the list as including _love_ and _new_, but all topped by
the #1 most powerful, _hope_.  I told him I could be pretty certain
that no such survey had been conducted by anyone here in the last 20
years, and that it didn't really sound like a survey anyone in
linguistics would have conducted, but I promised I'd ask around.  So
I hereby do so, not expecting too much in the way of a response.  (He
thought it might have been cited in a magazine like _American
Demography_.)

On the quote:  I was just now vaguely watching an ESPN SportsCentury
bio of Vince Lombardi that mentioned the quote attributed to him,
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."  The bio traced the
line to UCLA coach Red Sanders (IIRC--I was only half-listening at
that point) and then played an excerpt from a John Ford movie,
_Trouble Along the Way_, in which a child--not the ex-big time
college coach fallen on hard times but maybe his young
daughter--unmistakably utters the infamous line.  If I heard right,
the SportsCentury bio called TATW a 1940 movie, but my VideoHound
Movie Retriever authoritatively places _Trouble Along the Way_ in
1953 (which still predates Lombardi's coaching career).  But they
also called it a John Ford movie, which the 1953 one (starring John
Wayne) wasn't.  So maybe there was an earlier version of TATW in 1940
directed by John Ford that hasn't come out in video (since it's not
in the VideoHound) and that contains the motto (the excerpt was black
and white, but the 1953 movie is listed in the VideoHound as b&w, so
that doesn't help), or maybe when the bio said "a John Ford movie" it
really meant "a John Wayne movie".  I'll watch more closely if they
ever replay the Lombardi bio.

larry