God in the deatils (1960); No names, no pack-drill (1930)

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:03 PM -0500 1/25/05, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>>  The version with "devil" is so common that the "God" version becomes
>>  much more fascinating.
>
>I always thought of the "god" version as the primary saying and the
>"devil" one as a less common derivative, but a Google search shows 18,000
>hits for "god" and 109,000 for "devil."  It may be that the currency of
>"god is in the details" is mostly in architecture contexts whereas "devil
>is in the details" has become a popular general proverb.  Seems like one
>of those situations where there are two proverbs that are opposite in
>import.
>
One factor may be the alliterative effect of the "devil in the
details" version, along the lines of "give the devil his due".

Larry