Who Said That First? The Curious Origins of Common Words and Phrases by Max Cryer

Author:Max Cryer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education/Reference
ISBN: 978-1-877437-81-6
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,

The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.

The legend of the Lady with the Lamp was set for all time.

(Strangely, for one so associated with curing the sick, after her return to London from Turkey, Florence Nightingale went to bed and stayed there for 50 years!)

Lame duck

In 1761 the Earl of Orford, Horace Walpole, wrote to the British Envoy in Tuscany, Sir Horace Mann, saying:

How Scipio would have stared if he had been told that he must not demolish Carthage, as it would ruin several aldermen who had money in the Punic actions! Apropos – do you know what a Bull, a Bear and a Lame Duck are? Nay, nor I either – I am only certain they are neither animal nor fowl! This indicated that the expressions, later famous in the financial sector, were being used at the time, even if Walpole didn’t understand them apart from recognising a vague connection with people who had money invested.

The usage was clarified a decade later when David Garrick’s play Foote’s Maid of Bath made its debut (1771). In the Prologue, Garrick referred to financiers who frequented Exchange Alley (the Stock Exchange) and classified them as:

...gaming fools are doves, knaves are rooks, Change-Alley bankrupts waddle out lame ducks. The term went into use referring to brokers who defaulted on debts, and remained in use to describe those with financial problems, but grew to include anyone deemed ineffectual. When the ‘lame duck’ term travelled to America it assumed the feathers of politics and waddled into the arena of elected officials whose term of office was nearing an end.

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