[Ads-l] "Whole cloth" to designate falsehoods, lies [Antedating to 1755]

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

I'm sorry that the shortened link didn't work.

Let's try this again for that suspicious 1792 usage.

https://tarheels.live/adsl/wp-content/uploads/sites/4603/2023/07/The_Mail_or_Claypooles_Daily_Advertiser_1792-12-21_2.pdf

-- Bonnie



On Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 11:51 AM Bonnie Taylor-Blake <
b.taylorblake at gmail.com> wrote:

> Have we done this recently?
>
> OED has for "whole cloth" a "chiefly North American" colloquial,
> figurative noun form "used to indicate a statement, report, story, etc., is
> wholly false, with no basis in reality." Its earliest example dates to
> 1823. For an adjectival form used to designate the same (e.g., "a
> whole-cloth falsehood"), the OED offers an 1831 example as an early one.
>
> Typical appearances of the noun form are "made from/out of whole cloth"
> and "cut from/out of whole cloth."
>
> Here, below, are some antedatings. (I have to say that I'm a little unsure
> about the 1792 example, which could be interpreted as referring to
> inaccuracy or falsehood, but which could also be thought of as an example
> of "go the whole cloth," an idiom I'll soon send a message about.)
>
> -- Bonnie
>
>
> As to the Chest of Tea you so injuriously and falsly insinuate, that I had
> made a Reserve of, as not contained in my Account of Excise, it is made out
> of the whole Cloth ; for the first Time that I knew or heard any Thing of
> it, was in your publick Appearance, neither can I tell what you mean. And I
> hereby promise to pay you the sum of Twenty Pounds Lawful Money, on your
> proving only to indifferent Persons Satisfaction, that I sold a Chest of
> Tea, or any Considerable Quantity, [in the last six Months] that I did not
> Account for, and Pay Mr. Jones the Excise on. [In Wm. Whitwell's letter to
> John Hunt, published in The Boston Gazette, or Country Journal, 4 August
> 1755, p. 2.]
>
> I have been informed that it was in direct violation of our present
> glorious constitution ; and that therefore it not to be obeyed. The
> unconstitutionality of the law, he said, has not been proved. Very well
> said I, then let us go through the whole cloth -- it is not the assemblice
> [sic] and concerts carried on in violation of the law? He said he did not
> know that they were. [From "Theatrical Intelligence," The Mail; or,
> Claypoole's Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 21 December 1792, p. 2. For
> context, see article at https://t.ly/KdC_0.]
>
> The lying paragraph of last Monday deserves some investigation. If a
> printer had the secret of the dispatches from London, it shews a leakiness
> of the Cabinet that is extraordinary. But there is no ground for this
> aspersion. If the story was made out of the whole cloth, and made to
> influence the vote of that day, it shews, exactly what every body knew
> before. That Newspaper being known as the Brussel's Gazette, may now claim
> a patent for making and vending false news, without a competitor, and
> without injury to the public. [In "Says a Correspondent," Gazette of the
> United States and Evening Advertiser (Philadelphia), 25 April 1794, p. 3.]
>
> The Newfoundland story about BUONAPARTE's setting up for himself, &c. &c.
> is made out of the whole cloth. [Columbian Centinel (Boston), 3 January
> 1798, p. 3.]
>
> The tory papers say that Messrs. Madison, Lincoln, and Dearborn, blame the
> President of the United States for making new appointments, or, in other
> words, for displacing tories, and putting whigs in their room. This "plump
> lie," we presume, was "made out of the whole cloth." ["A Tory Lie," The
> Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston), 11 July 1801, p. 3.]
>
> (The expression really takes off around 1803. -- Bonnie)
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org