[Ads-l] ANTEDATING OF "MURPHY'S LAW" PROVERB (UNCLASSIFIED)

[MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY CCDC AVMC (USA)]

CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED

_Amateur Movie Makers_ Jan 1927 p. 29

"But just the moment the number of people in the audience gets up to that figure to constitute a crowd, you can count upon it that everything that can go wrong will go wrong."

https://archive.org/details/amateurmoviemake12amat/page/n80?q=%22can+go+wrong+will%22


> 
> On Fri, Nov 8, 2019, 11:33 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
> > Stephen Goranson, Bill Mullins, and I have done a lot of work
> > demonstrating that the popular story of the origins of "Murphy's Law"
> > is apocryphal.  This is true both with respect to the name "Murphy's
> > Law" and with respect to the proverb without the name.  The "Murphy's
> Law proverb"
> > is "anything that can go wrong will" or "if something can go wrong, it
> > will" or "anything that can possibly go wrong will" or "if something
> > can possibly go wrong it will."
> >
> > Goranson, Mullins, and I have found examples of the proverb without
> > the name as far back as 1862, but these examples are all comments on
> > particular areas of human experience such as business law or nautical
> > activities or magic performances.  I have now found what seems to be
> > the oldest known citation for the Murphy's Law proverb as a universal
> principle.
> >
> > In the British periodical Country Life, April 6, 1929 (found on the
> > ProQuest database), there appeared an article entitled "Waking-Up the
> > Boat Engine."  On page xlviii I find the following: "For my own part,
> > I always have the water pump overhauled before making any attempt to
> > start the engine, assuming with cautious pessimism that what can go
> > wrong will do so … "  This could be interpreted as a specific
> > assertion about boat engines, but I think it more likely that it was intended
> as a general maxim.
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> > Editor
> > YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - Caution-http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - Caution-http://www.americandialect.org


CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED

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