"a doer, not a talker"
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Tue Nov 15 16:15:56 UTC 2011
That's how late-night funnyman Rick Perry describes himself in a new ad.
Shakespeare's _Richard III_ (1597) has "Talkers are no good doers,"
which implies the distinction between saying and doing, but the
familiar form, as used by Perry, surprisingly doesn't appear in GB
till 1872.
1872 _United States Insurance Gazette_ XXV (June) 102: [H]e was
thoroughly practical; he was a doer, not a talker, and went about his
work in right earnest.
JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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