[Ads-l] Antedating of "The Establishment"

[Mark Mandel]

On Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 8:51 AM Martin Kaminer <martin.kaminer at gmail.com>
wrote:
>Curiously this topic is the major focus of Henry Fairlie's wikipedia page,
written by the legendary/infamous Philip Cross.

*That*, it was  not. The article's revision history includes exactly one
edit by him (
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_Fairlie&diff=next&oldid=61482189
):

21:23, 10 July 2006‎ Philip Cross talk contribs‎ m 890 bytes +23‎ stub
added

That was the second edit, just eight days after "Britannicus" created the
article, which initially consisted only of a description and quote of the
misattribution.

Unraveling the difference summary:
a minor edit, adding a 23-byte tag to bring the article to 890 bytes. (The
tag was *Template:UK-journalist stub*, which no longer exists.)

The article's current size is 7,662 bytes. (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fairlie) Its treatment of that quote
now begins and ends:

> Sometimes mistakenly believed to have coined the term "the
Establishment", an analysis of how "all the right people" came to run
Britain largely through social connections.

...

> The term was quickly picked up in newspapers and magazines all over
London, making Fairlie famous. The Oxford English Dictionary would cite
Fairlie's column as its* locus classicus*. However, he would later
determine that Ralph Waldo Emerson had really been the first to use "the
Establishment" in this fashion.


MAM, diligent at the unnecessary




On Sun, Jul 28, 2019, 8:51 AM Martin Kaminer <martin.kaminer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Curiously this topic is the major focus of Henry Fairlie's wikipedia page,
> written by the legendary/infamous Philip Cross.
>
> On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 8:32 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Subject:      Antedating of "The Establishment"
> >
> > The OED's first use for _establishment_, 8.b., is dated 1923.  This is
> the sense: "a social group exercising power generally, or within a given
> field or institution, by virtue of its traditional superiority, and by the
> use esp. of tacit understandings and often a common mode of speech, and
> having as a general interest the maintenance of the status quo."  The OED
> entry identjfies a 1955 article by Henry Fairlie as the locus classicus of
> this sense.
> >
> > Fairlie himself later (in the New Yorker, 19 Oct. 1968) traced use of
> "the establishment" in this sense to a 9 Dec. 1841 lecture by Ralph
> Waldo Emerson, titled "The Conservative."
> >
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
>

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