The Lightning-Bug and the Lightning

[Baker, John]

The wonderful Yale Book of Quotations (which will figure heavily in my gift-giving plans this year) includes the following quote from Mark Twain, 15 Oct 1888:
 
"The difference between the _almost_-right word & the _right_ word is really a large matter - it's the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."
 
Twain liked the lightning-bug/lightning comparison, and ISTR that he used it again on another occasion in talking about the right word.  But he also used it, earlier, for a non-literary comparison:
 
"Brigham Young, an expert of incontestable authority, said, "As compared with the other thing, it is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.""
 
"Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism" (Spring 1879), in Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852 - 1890, 722, 723 (Library of America 1992).  I found the comparison even more appropriate in this context.
 
 
John Baker
 

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