Having the proof in the pudding; and eating it
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This morning’s NYT had a headline story on the Democrats taking back control of Congress. As usual, both parties made the same empty pledges of cooperation and “bipartisanship” that we always hear, but which rarely, if ever, happens. However, this time leaders of both parties used the same “pudding” metaphor, which was odd enough that the NYT even remarked on it. What was stranger to me (but perhaps not so strange after all) was that both the senators used the same incorrect version of the proverb - “The proof is in the pudding.” The correct proverb, of course, is - “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” The latter actually makes sense, but I guess career politicians shy away from verbal constructs that have any real meaning. The proverb was first used by Cervantes in his epic work Don Quixote in which the Don’s squire, Sancho Panza, is a virtual fount of earthy wisdom, usually dispensed in the form of proverbs quoted out of context. But the sight of two senators mangling his proverb would make even good Sancho fall off his donkey.
I was going to write a longer post about this, but found the following which says it all.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/02/08/a_loss_for_words/
Yeah, this sort of corrupting of proverbs is laughable because the end result most often has a totally different meaning from the original proverb. The problem is that when a proverb or phrase is misquoted, people may either be ignorant of the original proverb to know the difference or just don’t bother to point out the error. Either way, with constant misquoting, the corrupted version becomes the conventional version. Reminds me of another well-known quotation that is a misquoted proverb in itself:
“Money is the root of all evil.”
The original quote is from the bible essentially says:
“The love of money is the root of all evil.”
There is obviously a huge difference between the two phrases. George Bernard Shaw took this and ran with it, once satirically remarking:
“The lack of money is the root of all evil”
Good ol’ Shaw.
Wikipedia has a list of famous misquotations. I was especially struck with this one, which is one of the most quoted lines in pop culture:
The quote in full goes:
How much more nuanced and subtle it is when placed in context.
I must confess I have unknowingly used the proverb “Religion is the opiate of the masses”. To my surprise, my wife - who is normally more picky about the right choice of words and frequently bemoans the ongoing corruption of the English language - seemed to think that the ‘pudding proverb’ has already passed into general acceptance and was OK.
Having learned the right usage from The Radiant Reader, “The proof is in the pudding” made no sense and unlike the sidhuisms, isn’t even funny.
While we are on the topic of the English language, the erstwhile planet Pluto is now a verb. Sad times.