OED Appeals: "rotten apple in every barrel"

[Wilson Gray]

I know the third example as,

"It's an ill wind that blows _nobody_ good"

which seems one-sidedly clear to me:

If something happens that's so bad that _nobody_ can make a buck off
it, then it's got to be bad beyond measure! I.e. the companies that
repair the damage done by such ill winds as hurricanes make billions
of dollars.

Apparently, rappers and hip-hoppers understand it that way, given that
"ill" is superior to "bad" in reverse slang.

OTOH, I don't have the slightest idea as to what is exemplified as an
antedating in this, there being much with which I am unfamiliar in it:

 "Local Matters" Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, (Bangor, ME) Monday,
April 17, 1882; Issue 89; col 4
"The subject of the lessons to-day will be as follows:  high class, puff
paste, oysters vol au vent, potato croquettes, dressed haddocks, white
sauce, stork for jelly and fish a la conquest; plain class, boiled apple
pudding, stewed steak, haddock stuffed and baked, boiled vegetables and
treacle tart."

-Wilson

-Wilson


On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: OED Appeals: "rotten apple in every barrel"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:19 AM -0400 9/16/08, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>Thanks for this information, Larry. I'd never heard/noticed this
>>"negative" version of the older, more familiar proverb. It's an
>>example of what one paremiologist (Doyle) has termed
>>"counter-proverbs": outright, explicit rebuttals of established
>>proverbs (not to be confused with what Wolfgang Mieder has called
>>"anti-proverbs," which are parodies or other ironic adaptations or
>>applications of proverbs). A counter-proverb may occur as an ad-hoc
>>sententia, or it may enter oral tradition as itself a proverb--as
>>has evidently occurred with "One rotten (bad) apple doesn't spoil
>>the whole barrel (bunch)."
>>
>>--Charlie
>
> Actually, I could never figure out which was the original version,
> since I don't know enough about agricultural or botanical issues to
> determine whether a rotten apple does or doesn't affect the others in
> the same barrel or bag.  I suppose we can apply for funding and do
> the study, controlling for different apple varieties and degrees of
> rottenness.  The season is coming right up!
>
> LH
>
> P.S.  Another issue with these proverbs is figuring out whether
> they're intended as a direction or a warning.  We may have discussed
> this before, but two classic examples are "a rolling stone gathers no
> moss" and "it's all downhill from here".  Oh, also "it's an ill wind
> that blows no good".
>
>>_____________________________________________________________
>>
>>---- Original message ----
>>>Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:22:01 -0400
>>>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>Subject: Re: OED Appeals: "rotten apple in every barrel"
>>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>>>To support the second of the two versions I mention below, there
>>>are 1530 raw g-hits for "[one] bad apple doesn't spoil..." (usual
>>>continuations "the whole bunch", "the bunch", "the barrel"), and
>>>then there are the "rotten apple" versions.  A lot more for the
>>>positive counterparts, but the negative version isn't entirely
>>>unfruitful.
>>>
>>>LH
>>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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