"organized chaos"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'd assumed that "organized chaos" was no more than about forty or fifty
years old. Governor Palin's lamestream use led me to check.

BTW, I was just looking into the variant "controlled chaos" only to find
that GB's "1936" snippet, from the New Yorker is, on the basis of internal
evidence (i.e., the black-and-white content) really from no earlier than
2006.

GB has an apparently legitimate "civilian-controlled chaos" from 1917, but
nothing more till the two-word phrase took off in the '50s.

JL

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 3:48 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "organized chaos"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > organized chaos
>
> "Chaotic organization" is probably a better term.;-)
>
> --
> -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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