steel hand, velvet glove

[Jonathan Lighter]

Here's the primary OED cite (s.v. "iron, a.") :

"1850 T. CARLYLE Latter-d. Pamph. ii. 8 Soft of speech and manner, yet with an inflexible rigour of command..‘iron hand in a velvet glove’, as Napoleon defined it."

Carlyle's attribution may well be correct, as an ECCO search for "Iron hand" + "velvet glove" yielded nothing.

None of the OED cites, by the way, have "iron fist."

JL







Douglas Bigham <TlhovwI at AOL.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Douglas Bigham
Subject: Re: steel hand, velvet glove
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And you would be correct. Google results (unchecked for context):
"steel hand..." 258
"steel fist..." 136
"iron hand..." 508
"iron fist..." 2440

But does anyone know anything about the origins of the phrase?
-doug

-dsb
Douglas S. Bigham
Department of Linguistics
University of Texas - Austin
http://hometown.aol.com/capn002/myhomepage/index.html



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