"Murphy's Law" antedating 1943 (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Dave is correct. I'm skeptical of the cites simply because these new
exx.  sound "too good to be true."

People who publish their diaries decades later have an annoying habit of
doing minor verbal editing that can drive lexicographers crazy.

This principle was suggested to me years ago in Charles R. Bond's _Flying
Tiger's Diary_  (Texas A & M Press, 1984).  Bond writes (p. 211):

"August. 12, 1942
Was up at 4:30, had coffee by lantern light, rode to the field in an RAF
'dune buggy.'"

AFAICT from Google Books "dune buggy" is a 1950s coinage, possibly sugg. by
the syn. "beach buggy," making it slightly earlier than I had thought.
"Dune buggies" became to national attention in the early '60s. (OED online
has 1964, but Newspaper Archive turns them up from 1956 on. There is a
"beach buggy" from 1935, but it's just an old taxi. A 1939 "beach
buggy" is more like a toy.)

Anyway, the chances are that Bond's "dune buggy" was a "Bren-gun carrier," a
widely used vehicle more easily beheld than described:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/A_Bren_Gun_Carrier_brings_in_a_batch_of_German_prisoners.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Bren_Gun_Carrier_brings_in_a_batch_of_German_prisoners.jpg&h=661&w=696&sz=83&tbnid=CdbQA0FuIZS4LM:&tbnh=132&tbnw=139&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522bren%2Bgun%2Bcarrier%2522&hl=en&usg=__-g2kEMB_VgP7NXesSvfjd9F-Jfk=&ei=ZG7LSonVMKGutgflsaHpAQ&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image

Of course I can't _prove_ that Bond didn't write "dune buggy" in 1942, but
if he did he was a linguistic visionary of a high order. My tentative belief
is that the "Murphy's Law" memoirists would fall into the same
category.FWIW, I have never come across an ex. of "Murphy's Law" used even
retroactively in any earlier memoir or first-person fiction about WWII.
Surely such a handy, expressive term, had it been in use at all, should have
spread widely and quickly.


JL

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Murphy's Law" antedating 1943 (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> No, "air force" was a reasonably common term during WWII. Common usage
> doesn't follow the dictates of official nomenclature.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
> Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 7:36 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "Murphy's Law" antedating 1943 (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> Does the fact that there was no "Air Force" as such in 1943 call this
> into question?  -- It was the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943, I believe.
>
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