interim comment on "Murphy's Law" antedating 1943

[Jonathan Lighter]

Bear in mind too that if Sabel himself retyped the letters for publication,
it wouldn't be remarkable for him to add, on the spur of the moment,
the retrospective phrase "Murphy's Law" to sum up the idea that "something
may go wrong and usually does."

As a normal human, he couldn't have imagined that pedants would focus on
this.

By the by, one of my earliest TV memories is the introduction to the
syndicated kid's show "Magic Cottage," I'd say in 1953. It contained the
words, "where anything can happen - and most everything does!"  My small
brain thought that was so great!  Of course, at that age I couldn't see the
ominousness behind the notion....

JL



On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: interim comment on "Murphy's Law" antedating 1943
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jesse's comments seem largely sound to me, but I wonder whether part of his
> reasoning is problematic.  What I mean to say is, giving a proverb a name
> without explanation seems natural to us now, but maybe that is because we
> already are familiar with Murphy's Law, the Peter Principle, Parkinson's
> Law, and other humorous named "laws."  Parkinson's Law (1955) and Murphy's
> Law (not at all widespread before the 1950s as far as we know) were probably
> the first prominent humorous named "laws," so in 1943 it might not have been
> natural to name a proverb in this way.
>
> Fred
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jesse
> Sheidlower [jester at PANIX.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 10:03 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>  Subject: Re: interim comment on "Murphy's Law" antedating 1943
>
> On Thu, Oct 08, 2009 at 09:49:58AM -0400, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > Sabel's usage seems suspect to me:
> >
> > "I keep thinking about what equipment I will need in the morning and what
> > this squad and that squad will have to do. I feel if I am not personally
> > watching every move the men make, something will go wrong and it usually
> > does - Murphy's Law."
> >
> > The passage appears in a a letter from Sabel to his mother. If the phrase
> > was really a novel expression in 1943, I can hardly picture Sabel writing
> it
> > without either quotation marks or some explanation of its presumed
> origin,
> > its currency, etc.  The letter seems to imply that Mrs. Sabel is already
> > familiar with the term.  But that would suggest significant civilian
> > currency 25 years before we have any other evidence of it.
>
> Without saying anything about the larger question here, I
> don't agree that the passage is subject for this reason. This
> reads to me as if he is relating the proverb and giving the
> name for it, without implying that his mother is familiar with
> this name--he's telling her that this proverb has a name, and
> what that name is. Setting it off with a dash has the feel to
> me of scare quotes or something else like that.
>
> And the concept of Murphy's Law is so obviously proverbial
> that it seems to me that this, also, would not be confusing.
> That is, "something will go wrong and it usually does" is a
> concept that _seems_ proverbial even to someone unfamiliar
> with the proverb, so Sabel then giving it a name feels
> natural.
>
> Again, I don't know that this is genuine, but I don't think
> that the lack of further explanation on Sabel's part itself
> suggests that the quotation is bogus.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
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