Re: Misquotations [WAS: He knelt him at that word.]

On Mar 28, 3:34 pm, t...@xxxxxxxxxx (Donna Richoux) wrote:
jerry_fried...@xxxxxxxxx <jerry_fried...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 28, 4:48 am, k...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (K. Edgcombe) wrote:
In article <56rg86F2a3h1...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

John Dean <john-d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Probably the most ubiquitous poetic misquote, though "They shall not
grow old, as we that are left grow old ... we shall remember them"
surely runs it a close second..

Nope. "Fresh fields and pastures new" beats both.

Maybe you're both thinking only of lyric poetry?

Let's see what Mr. Google misquotes. For anyone who doesn't know any
of these, the correct version is the last.

"Home is the sailor, home from the sea": 672
"Home is the sailor, home from sea: 730

"fresh fields and pastures new": 819
"fresh woods and pastures new": 9,820

"they shall not grow old as we that are left grow old": 12,300
"they shall grow not old as we that are left grow old": 16,900

"gild the lily": 81,400
"gilding the lily": 69,100
"painting the lily": 4,340
"paint the lily": 25,200 ("To gild refinèd gold, or paint the lily")

"a little knowledge is a dangerous thing": 131,000
"a little learning is a dangerous thing": 61,400

Donna, do you collect misquotations?

No, I don't. Maybe you'd like to. However, I think immediately one runs
into a bunch of philosophical problems, like, how do you determine
whether the speaker was *trying* to quote a source known to him.

I don't think you can ever determine that. I strongly suspect that
most people who say "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" don't
know whether it's an anonymous proverb or a quotation. As you know,
the Milton and Binyon quotations are far less often used in America
than in Britain, so my experience doesn't help me guess whether people
who quote them correctly or incorrectly know where they're from.

Rather than try to read people's minds, I was using an objective
criterion--the phrase almost but not quite matches the quotation.

In this regard, I think you have to pull "gilding the lily" out of that
list. In my opinion, people who have been saying it for the last hundred
years or so are *not* deliberately trying to quote Shakespeare, they're
just using a phrase they've heard.
....

I imagine that's true.

Incidentally, as I said here once before, I think the misquotation is
better than the original, and it's what I would use.

It was interesting to find the scene (King John. Act iv. Sc. 2) to
figure out what Shakespeare was getting at. As I read it, King John's
courtiers were trying to flatter him while agreeing with him that
getting crowned twice was a bad idea, sort of. In what situation today
might that come up?... Talking to a friend who thought she was wrong to
have plastic surgery done? "You were wonderful before, this is just
icing on the cake"?
....

"You look fine without make-up." (To turn to "gild the lily", the
trend for girls to use glittery make-up seems to have met its well-
deserved fate, at least around here, but I can't imagine a more pat
use for the phrase.)

"We don't say 'Professor Doctor' in English," and "You don't need to
say 'Dr. Doe, Ph. D.' or 'M. D.'"

"I don't like chocolate chocolate-chip cookies." (I've actually heard
someone say that.)

--
Jerry Friedman

.

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