"This pudding has no theme"

[Charles Doyle]

Just for the record: Probably (but not certainly) antedating the 1623 appearance of the proverb in Camden's _Remaines_, John Fletcher's _The First Female_ has "The Pudding's now i'th proof"; the play is usually dated about 1611, though it was first published in 1647 (Fletcher died in 1625).

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:39:10 -0400
>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>

>
>At 11:26 AM -0400 7/18/07, Laurence Horn wrote:

>>At 4:10 PM +0100 7/18/07, Michael Quinion wrote:

>>>The dating of the evidence suggests that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" is much the older form (The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs has its first explicit example from 1623, though it quotes a text of c1300 to show the idea was around even earlier), from which "The proof is in the pudding" has been derived.
>>>...

>>As noted in my last message, the OED itself also has that 1623 cite for the eating version, and as far as I can tell doesn't have "the proof is in the pudding" at all.  AHD4 has "the proof of the pudding", Mike's posited elliptical version.
>>
>>LH
>>

>Oops.  Sorry, I should have rechecked the dates before posting.  What the OED has at _pudding_ 6b is nothing earlier than this 1682 cite:
>
>1682 N. O. Boileau's Lutrin III. Argt. 23 The proof of th' Pudding's seen i' th' eating.
>
>and there's no reference to anything earlier.
>
>LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org