"Once a Dodger, Always a Dodger" (1934)

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:01 AM -0700 5/17/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On May 17, 2005, at 7:47 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>>At 8:04 AM -0400 5/17/05, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>>>I've just added "once a Dodger, always a Dodger" to my web page.
>>>...
>>>Can anyone beat 1934?
>>>...
>>>
>>
>>I wonder if there are earlier cites for "Once a(n) X, always a(n) X".
>>When I was a young'un, I remember being taught on my professor's knee
>>"Once a phoneme, always a phoneme".  That was after 1934, though.
>
>ah, the sort of formula that we dubbed "snowclone" on the Language
>Log.  the most recent discussion is of the "every schoolboy knows..."
>formula, on 2/27/05:
>
>   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001932.html
>
>  i'll note the "once a X, always a Y" formula on the blog, with a
>pointer to ADS-L.
>
There are 886K google hits for "once a" "always a", featuring on the
first couple of pages no Dodgers or phonemes, but a motley collection
of marines, cheaters, friends, Caesarean (which come to think of it
I've read about), deserters, tuba players, and such.  Plus another
32.4K for "once an" "always an", featuring Arabs, Indians, English
majors, orphans, and addicts.  Some of these (marines, Caesareans,
addicts) are no doubt proverbial, others are formed productively as
needed.  Anyone want to tackle the issue of first cite for the
construction type?

Larry