[Ads-l] Quote: A picture is worth ten thousand words

[Shapiro, Fred]

I checked GenealogyBank and, as is so often the case, Garson is correct.  The wording is "ten thousand words."  I am not sure how the error crept into DMP and YBQ.

Fred Shapiro

________________________________
From: ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2022 9:52 PM
To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at listserv.uga.edu>
Cc: Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>; Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu>
Subject: Quote: A picture is worth ten thousand words

Way back on July 2011 I posted two messages about the saying in the
subject line:

https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fpipermail%2Fads-l%2F2011-July%2F110830.html&data=05%7C01%7Cfred.shapiro%40yale.edu%7C514609d000e346b1c9cb08da6b84e656%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C637940515783129011%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Ajqn7oRHSVLrIyz%2FpPXk11uH5pb0M%2BfMWjl229rlWnI%3D&reserved=0
https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flistserv.liguistlist.org%2Fpipermail%2Fads-l%2F2011-July%2F110846.html&data=05%7C01%7Cfred.shapiro%40yale.edu%7C514609d000e346b1c9cb08da6b84e656%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C637940515783129011%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=5T%2FsK7mSTwCTTY32mxOHnNqaumD%2BjAbxX8cpNRsYwY8%3D&reserved=0

Now, after a short delay of eleven years I am preparing to post an
article on the Quote Investigator website. But I am a bit confused.
Back in 2011 I posted a citation dated July 26, 1915 in the “New
Orleans Item” in which Arthur Brisbane used the expression:

A picture is worth ten thousand words.

But “The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs” and “The New Yale Book of
Quotations” both point to the same newspaper and date, but they credit
Arthur Brisbane with the slightly different expression:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Maybe the newspaper contains both expressions? Could Fred or Charlie
state where the quotation appears?

The “ten thousand” expression appears on page 6 with an article titled
“Debt Carries You for a While But---Groaning and Sweating, You Carry
Debt in the End” by Arthur Brisbane. The PDF is in GenealogyBank.

Here is an overview of the citations in the article that I am planning to post.

1750: One timely deed is worth ten thousand words. (James Thomson)

1828: One broad look is worth a thousand descriptions. (Anonymous)

1848: One fact, my dear madam, is worth ten thousand words. (Henry Tudor)

1876: One “look” is worth a thousand descriptions. (Robert Maguire)

1891: One good picture is worth many pages of written description.
(William Sproston Caine)

1893: One look is worth all the guesses in creation. (Howard Crutcher)

1895: One look is worth a ton of letters. (B. M. Croker)

1895: The drawing shows me at a glance what would be spread over ten
pages in a book. (English translation of Ivan Turgenev's 1862 novel)

1898: One look is worth three feels and four guesses. (Attributed to
Robert T. Morris)

1903: One look is worth a thousand words (Kathleen Caffyn)

1907: A minute of examination is worth a thousand words of
description. (Advertisement)

1910 Apr 30: One picture is worth several pages of an ordinary law
brief for the illuminative ideas it suggests. (Anonymous)

1911 Mar 28: Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words. (Arthur Brisbane)

1912: One picture is worth many pages of description. (Helen Churchill Candee)

1912 May 04: One picture is worth a dozen chapters of mere words.
(Advertisement)

1914 May 16: A look is worth a thousand words. (Described as Japanese saying)

1914 Oct 12: One look is worth a thousand words. (Described as Chinese saying)

1915 Jul 26: A picture is worth ten thousand words. (Arthur Brisbane)

1915 Jul 29: A strong picture is worth ten thousand words. (Attributed
to Arthur Brisbane)

1915 Nov 05: A strong picture is worth a thousand words. (Attributed
to Arthur Brisbane)

1915 Dec 04: A picture is worth a thousand words. (Advertisement)

1917: A picture is worth a thousand words. (Described as a Japanese proverb)

1917 Apr 05: A good photograph is worth a thousand words. (Anonymous)

1920 Jan 29: One picture is worth ten thousand words. (Attributed to
unnamed famous journalist)

1921 Dec 08: One Look Is Worth a Thousand Words. (Attributed to
unnamed famous Japanese philosopher)

1925 Jan 25: One picture is worth ten thousand words. (Described as
old Chinese proverb)

Garson

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