NO REST FOR THE X

[Wilson Gray]

There's no obvious connection between "peace" and "rest" in Israeli
Hebrew. Of course, Biblical Hebrew is a whole 'nother language.

-Wilson

On 5/24/06, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      NO REST FOR THE X
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>
> Or, "No X for the wicked."
>
> Somebody may have pointed out this "source" in the recent
> discussions; it's Isaiah 48:22, "There is no peace, saith
> the Lord, unto the wicked" (Geneva Bible); and Isaiah
> 57:21, "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked"
> (Geneva Bible).  In both of those verses, the prophet seems
> to be quoting another source (or maybe a vision).
>
> As regularly happens when a fixed text (such as a scriptural
> verse or a line from Shakespeare or Pope) passes into oral
> tradition, the wording gets altered slightly.  In this
> case, "peace" got changed to "rest" (although proverb
> dictionaries do record versions that retain "peace").  I
> don't know whether the Hebrew noun would itself admit of the
> translation "rest" (it's "pax" in the Vulgate).
>
> Jan Brunvand's Dictionary of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases
> from Books Published by Indiana Authors before 1890
> (Bloomington, 1961) gives an instance of "There is no rest
> for the wicked" from 1845 (p. 117).
>
> Of course, parodying proverbs is itself an old tradition.
>
> --Charlie
>
> ______________________________________
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 20:25:38 -0700
> >From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> >Subject: NO REST FOR THE X
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> >looks like this has become a snowclone.  in the first
> hundred webhits, i get X = Clinton-obsessed, brave, woody,
> query, sleepless, productive, victorious, dead, waking,
> liver, victors, innocent, Talking Heads, wayfarer, workers,
> cookie-maker, retiree, professors, creepy, mentally ill,
> boys aboard Ericsson
> >
> >"query" is especially nice, given the rhyme to "weary".  and
> >"innocent", the opposite of "wicked".
> >
> >arnold
>
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