The Fickle Finger of Fate

[Dan Goncharoff]

In your time period:

The Yale Daily News no. 53
 November 27 1937: Harvard's Benchley Soaks Eli's Woolley

"But for some inscrutable reason the fickle finger of Fate pointed out to
him that he should raise a beard."

Makes me wonder if it came from vaudeville or Hollywood...


DanG


On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      The Fickle Finger of Fate
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Some of us may associate this phrase with Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (where
> it figured in the weekly "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award."
>
> Others, more knowledgeable, believe it arose during World War II.
>
> Both wrong:
>
> 1934 _Arcadia [Calif.] Tribune_ (July 7) 7: But the fickle finger of
> fate...decreed otherwise.
>
> 1936 _Ruston [La.] Daily Ledger_   (May 2) 4: Anyway, we hope the little
> pup has better luck than his predecessors, whose lives were cut short by
> the fickle finger of fate.
>
> 1937 _Times-Picayune_ (N.O.) (Aug. 8) IV 2: Kissinger is the correspondent
> responsible for the vivid "fickle finger of fate" account of McLaney's
> injury.
>
> The fickle finger strikes, and, having struck, moves on....
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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