"Half the battle"

[Dan Goncharoff]

Thanks for the Cervantes reminder!

DanG


On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 5:35 PM, Nathaniel Sharpe <nts at bethlehembooks.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Nathaniel Sharpe <nts at BETHLEHEMBOOKS.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Half the battle"
>
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>
> Don't know if any of this is new, but here's what I turned up.
>
> The variation "Knowing is Half the Battle" seems to have been
> popularized by the 1970 GI Joe TV show.
>
> According to Betty Kirkpatrick (http://goo.gl/9RDu1) the phrase was
> originally "The first blow is half the battle," and dated from the 18th
> century.
>
> The earliest instance of this phrase I saw was in the 1713 "The Young
> Man's Counselor" (http://goo.gl/0VmTj), but already the phrase appears
> to have been an accepted proverb.
>
> One interesting find is from John Stevens 1726 Spanish-English
> dictionary (http://goo.gl/NGg2t) where, under the entry for Hombre he
> has the example "hombre apercebido medio combatido" which he translates
> as "a man that is prepar'd has half the battle over." Could this Spanish
> phrase be the forerunner of the similar English one?
>
> I looked up the Spanish version and found that Cervantes used it in Don
> Quioxte (translated as "He who is prepared has his battle half fought")
> as well as an instance back in 1545, in the /Tragicomedia de Calisto y
> Melibea/, (http://goo.gl/IcvRa). My Spanish is very slim, though, so I'm
> not sure of the context.
>
> Nat
>
>
>
>
> On 2/4/2013 3:25 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dan Goncharoff<thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      "Half the battle"
> >
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> >
> > One of the Super Bowl commercials, the one for Jeep about troops
> returning
> > home, had the following line:
> >
> > "Half the battle is knowing that this is half the battle."
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FadwTBcvISo
> >
> > My brain promptly exploded, but when I had put it back together again, I
> > wondered whether we know the origin of "half the battle" as a phrase.
> > Anyone?
> >
> > DanG
> >
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