Quip: If your husband were alive, your conduct would make him turn in his grave (1898)

[Jonathan Lighter]

To my mind, there's just something a little bit off metaphysically in the
whole thing.

JL

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 8:33 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Quip: If your husband were alive, your conduct would make
> him
>              turn in his grave (1898)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Jonathan Lighter
> > But why "turn"?
> >
> > I could understand "groan" or even "shudder," but why "turn"?  Just to be
> > face down?
> >
> > "Spin," of course, is simply inflationary semantics.
>
> Perhaps the word "turn" is used because it connotes uneasy slumber,
> i.e., tossing and turning during sleep. Death and sleep are often
> metaphorically connected. Current developments would reach the dead as
> dreamlike visions and cause distress leading to agitation in an
> extended implicit metaphor.
>
> GO'T
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> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:      Quip: If your husband were alive, your conduct would make
> h=
> > im
> >>              turn in his grave (1898)
> >>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> > ------
> >>
> >> Jonathan Lighter wrote
> >> > I just posted a message that featured the comment, "The Founders are
> >> > spinning."
> >> >
> >> > OED doesn't have it. OK, but neither does it have to "spin in one's
> >> grave."
> >> > Yet the cliche', to "turn over in one's grave" seems just as absent.
> >> >
> >> > I'm guessing I noticed "turn over..." by 1970; "spin..." ten or
> fifteen
> >> > years later; plain "spinning" only in the 21st Century.
> >>
> >> The "turn over in grave" figure of speech occurred before 1900 because
> >> it was the subject of a gag in 1898. (Also see OED cite further
> >> below.) I discovered this indirectly while tracing the following
> >> Goldwynism
> >>
> >> If Roosevelt were alive he'd turn in his grave.
> >>
> >> The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations 2nd Edition has this
> >> quotation and attributes the words to Samuel Goldwyn. Shakespeare,
> >> Tchaikovsky, Jules Verne and other figures have been resurrected and
> >> set spinning in variants of this quip which has been attributed to
> >> multiple individuals. Here is the joke in 1898:
> >>
> >> Cite: 1897-8, The Leisure Hour, Irish Wit and Humor As Shown in
> >> Proverbs and Bulls by Elsa D'Esterre-Keeling, Page 709, Column 2,
> >> Paternoster Row, London. (HathiTrust)
> >>
> >> It was an Irish moralist who rebuked a widow in the words, "If your
> >> husband were alive, your conduct would make him turn in his grave"; =85
> >>
> >>
> >> The OED groups together several figurative and proverbial expressions
> >> under 1.d. for the noun grave. Here is the first using the word turn.
> >>
> >> 1888 J. Bryce Amer. Commonw. I. xii. 159   Jefferson might turn in his
> >> grave if he knew of such an attempt to introduce European distinctions
> >> of rank into his democracy.
> >>
> >> Garson
> >>
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> >
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