"Walk the talk" antedated to 1957

[Benjamin Zimmer]

[Reposting -- sorry if this gets sent twice. --bgz]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
[...]
> This was in a 2005 message, from the days before Google Books. Here are a
> couple of pre-1984 examples I found there:
>
> Company Execs and S&H Must Walk the Talk
> (Occupational Hazards. By Health Reference Center, 1962, p. 11)
>
> The challenge for the government will be to walk the talk and be transparent
> and non-political in its decision-making.
> (Middle East Economic Digest, 1957, p. 51)

These appear to be typical Google misdatings of periodicals, unfortunately. A
search on surrounding text suggests that the first passage is from 1998 and the
second one from 2003.


--Ben Zimmer

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