crisis = danger + opportunity (1938)

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Tue Mar 27 21:02:45 UTC 2007


The old line about the Chinese word for "crisis" consisting of the
characters for "danger" and "opportunity" is traced by YBQ and other
sources to a 1959 speech by John F. Kennedy. Here's a Language Log
post taking it back another couple of decades:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004343.html

Comments welcome, as always.


--Ben Zimmer

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