Hobson v. Hobbes

[Kathleen E. Miller]

Anyone willing to help out on this one?

A lawyer in an exchange with Justice Scalia:

JUSTICE SCALIA: You don't have to be the great college you are, you can be
a lesser college if that value is important enough to you. MR. PAYTON: I
think that decision which would say that we have to choose, would be a
Hobbesian choice here.

Now we all know that Hobson's Choice is no choice at all. Sort of like the
"soup nazi" of the 17th century.
(OED has Tobias Hobson with phrase dated to 1660, M-W has Thomas Hobson
with phrase dated to 1649, other sources offer both Tobias and Thomas, with
dating to Thomas Ward's "English Reformation" in either 1630 or 1638 - I
wonder which is correct!)

The ONE source I can find that even mentions Hobbesian choice is Bryan
Garner's "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage." Garner calls it a
"beautifully grotesque" malapropism.

But, there are other things floating out there on the Web, NPR's Ombudsman
for instance, that say Hobbesian choice is a legitimate term that means a
choice between two equally objectionable alternatives (which Hobson's
Choice can also mean).

And it would seem that a Hobbesian Choice --  "living in eternal anarchy"
or "subjecting oneself to the whim of a tyrannical ruler" -- would be a
choice between to evils (Hell or Connaught) but is it a legitimate phrase?

Is it a malapropism?

The earliest I can find is 1970, (I'm locked out of 80% of my databases do
to a firewall problem). And the hit, from the NYT, is followed by a letter
to the editor correcting the author.

90% of what I have come across leads me to believe it is a malapropism. But
it's the 10% that says it's not that's bothering me.


Kathleen E. Miller
Research Assistant to William Safire
The New York Times