interim comment on "Murphy's Law" antedating 1943

[Wilson Gray]

Is there a non-trivial distinction between Murphy's Law and Finagle's
Law, aside from the obvious fact that no one, AFAIK, claims that
"Finagle" is / was a real person?

-Wilson

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: interim comment on "Murphy's Law" antedating 1943
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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>> 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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--
-Wilson
–––
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

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