Loose cannon (1889)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Despite Hugo and "common sense," the record indicates that the metaphoric "loose cannon" didn't become common usage till after about 1950 - or even '70.

  JL

Sarah Lang <slang at UCHICAGO.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Sarah Lang
Subject: Re: Loose cannon (1889)
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19thc. seems late. I would doubt it was not in usage during even the
17thc. (maybe even 16th)--as a "loose a can(n)on is rather serious
problem. I think it would be a question of when nautical speech was
recorded.

(Also: when a Loose Cannon Flogs a Dead Horse There's the Devil to
Pay: Seafaring Words in Everyday Speech--Olivia A. Isil. Not
academic, but a good and entreating starting place.)

s.

On May 17, 2007, at 10:28 AM, Stephen Goranson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Stephen Goranson
> Subject: Re: Loose cannon (1889)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Quoting Dave Wilton :
>
>> OED3 and HDAS have 1946.
>>
>> From the _Galveston Daily News_ (Texas), 19 December 1889
>> (newspaperarchive.com):
>>
>> "It would in no event become, as Mr. Grady once said, "a loose
>> cannon in a
>> storm-tossed ship," for the very reason that it has not
>> intelligence enough
>> to voluntarily stand alone as a class and vote as a political unit.
>>
>> The metaphor may also be credited to Victor Hugo, who in his 1874
>> novel
>> _Ninety Three_, included an incident about a cannon loose on the
>> deck of
>> ship during a storm.
>
> Google books gives from Number seventeen: A Noevl [sic, though not
> so on the
> title page} by Henry Kingsley, London, vol. 2, (apparently-
> legitimate) date
> 1875, p.60:
>
> At once, of course, the ship was in the trough of the sea, a more
> fearfully
> dangerous engine of destruction than Mr. Victor Hugo's celebrated
> loose
> cannon.
> ...
>
> Stephen Goranson
> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>
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