"Unring" Not in OED

[Charles Doyle]

Chiming in from the paremiological wing of the ADS: "You can't unring a bell" [1] has considerable currency outside legal contexts, and [2] is definitely a proverb!

The proverb is partly synonymous with the older "What's said is said" (which may, at some point, have had a variant "What's said cannot be unsaid") and, in turn, with "What's done is done" or "What's done cannot be undone"--but it would be rash to propose that the modern proverb DERIVES FROM the earlier ones.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:14:31 +0000
>From: ronbutters at AOL.COM
>>
. . . .
>
>I'm also wondering just what "currency" means--you cite age as important, but "unring" has not been around very long & 69,000 Google hits is not really a lot, especially if (as Larry says) the cliche (I resist calling it a proverb) is largely confined to legal contexts and is thus jargony.
>
>You don't mention likelihood of survival and productivity as criteria--hard to estimate, I know, but surely relevant. I'd agree that "You can't unring a bell" is likely to be around for a while, but I wonder if it will spread to other environments (e.g., "The fat lady can,t unsing the last song," "You can't unfuck a deflowered virgin"-though maybe "you can't unconfess your crime"), though my guess is that "unsay" in pretty much this same sense has been around for a long time (You can't unsay an insult") . Maybe "unring" is an extensuon of that? In which case "unsay" would be a good place to add "unring" in the updated OED?
>
>------Original Message------
>From: Jesse Sheidlower
>Sender:
>To: ronbutters at AOL.COM
>Cc: ADS-L
>Sent: Nov 26, 2007 11:58 PM
>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "Unring" Not in OED
>
>On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 01:54:04AM +0000, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>> I wonder what the criteria are for listing prefixed words
>> when they are semantically transparent?
>
>The main criterion, for this and most other things, is simply
>currency. No, we can't put in every _non-_, _re-_, or _un-_
>word that comes along, but the ones that have been in regular
>use for centuries are likely to make the cut.
>
>I think that _unring_ certainly deserves to be included,
>because of the frequency of the proverb.
>
>Jesse Sheidlower
>OED

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