one more tautology

[Garson O'Toole]

John Locke uses a remarkably concise meta-tautophrase several times in
"An Essay Concerning Human Understanding":

What is, is.

http://books.google.com/books?id=p608AAAAYAAJ&q=%22What+is+is%22#v=snippet&

There is an anti-tautophrase based on a different sense of the word
fair. The proverb incorporates an explanation for its anti-tautology.

Citation: 1804, Proverbs; or, The Manual of Wisdom, Page 24, Tabart and Co.

Fair is not fair, but that which pleaseth.

http://books.google.com/books?id=rHoCAAAAYAAJ&q=%22not+fair%22#v=snippet&

Garson

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: one more tautology
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I just found myself using this one:  "Fair is fair".  Lots of hits,
>> but it's hard to count given all the ones for "How fair is fair
>> trade?" and the like.
>
> G.L. Apperson's _English Proverbs_ dates "Fair is fair, work or play"
> to 1710 (Samuel Palmer, _Moral Essays on Proverbs_ 31). OED2 has the
> more colloquial "fair's fair" ['(reciprocal) fairness is called for']
> from 1898 (Google Books has it from 1840).
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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