TIL that the quote ‘And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.’ is not from some literally text; it’s from the script for Die Hard. Hans Gruber quotes it but it isn’t a real quote. It’s just in the movie.
Another example would be “Oh you sweet summer child” is actually from A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) about the naivety of children born in the seven year summer who hasn’t yet seen a winter.
What are some others?
never mind
I think it might be true to say that this phrase experienced a boost of popularity from GoT. The origin of the saying (and usage to denote a naive person) is definitely older.
https://www.google.com/search?q="sweet%20summer%20child"&tbm=bks&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1800,cd_max:1880&lr=lang_en
And it seems with the quote about Alexander, whilst the exact wording of the quote might be unique to the script of Die Hard, the notion that Alexander the Great wept when he realised there were no more worlds to conquer, is not novel to the movie - the idea has been in circulation for at least five centuries.
The term meaning a…well… sunny disposition predates game of thrones. It comes from the idea that our birth season dictated our character. But there was no connotation of naivety, only a tendency to happiness. The naivety part is from game of thrones as in that universe a child can grow up having never experienced Winter
I’m pretty sure that one goes back to at least caveman days.
< flees >
I don’t believe that, although we might be splitting hairs here - I am certain I have heard/seen it used to denote, if not naivety specifically, youthful innocence, which is more or less the same thing.
Here’s a citation including a Victorian poem in which the connotation is childlike innocence (and the author of the article linked also states (opinion, of course):
In the 60s and 70s, I frequently heard it in response to some bit of pre-teen or teen angst I expressed in my youthful confidence that in under two decades I had managed to acquire far more wisdom than had the totality of adults of my acquaintance. “You really think no one else has thought of that? Oh, my sweet summer child.”
These two quotes and there weirdly revisionist notions of origin are examples of what I believe to be an internet-age phenomenon whereby people assume that the first place they saw or heard a thing, is the origin of that thing.
So my favorite counter example is the Conan the Barbarian line: “What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women”. It actually comes from Ghengis Khan (or at least the author thought it was a Ghengis Khan quote, there is some debate on the veracity of that)
I thought Nirvana made it up in the 90s.
< ducks >
< ducks >< ducks >< ducks >< ducks >< ducks >< ducks >
How old is this saying?
Sounds quackers to me.
Why a duck?
Because pigeons cheat at chess.
We only been using the terms ‘red state’ and ‘blue state’ since the 2000 election. Confusingly, NBC used blue to denote states won by Republicans (and red for states won by Democrats) on their electoral maps up until 1996.
No one is claiming the words Summer and Child were never put together in writing but the saying as it is used presently comes from Game of Thrones. The counter examples are little snippets here and there. It was not a common saying. Certainly not as common as it has been the last ten years.
The Die Hard one I had no idea until today and it does indeed seem to be true that while the quote sounds like something literary and is quoted as if it is, it was written by the screenwriter.
Calling them revisionist is an overstatement.
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Said by Harvey Dent. Whose entire deal is being unhinged and unreliable. And not even the Harvey Dent of the Silver Age comics, the Harvey Dent of The Dark Knight, released in 2008.
Anyone who followed the life of Bob Hope, Fred Rogers, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, Jim Henson, or Shigeru Miyamoto would find this quote extremely weird.
The fact that something experienced a recent trend recently is not the same as that thing having a recent origin.
As for ‘revisionist’, sorry, might not be the right word even, but I have seen this time and again, where a recent and highly popular iteration of a specific thing is stated to be the original, just because people encountered the recent iteration first.
No, it does not. The phrase ‘oh, my sweet summer child’ (not just the mere conjunction of the two words ‘summer’ and ‘child’) was in use with more or less the same connotation for a long time prior to game of thrones.
GoT undoubtedly caused it to trend. Many people might use it now in the understanding that they are quoting the show or the book, but that’s not the origin of the saying.
I was semi-astounded to hear the exclamation “Jehoshaphat!” come out of my mouth yesterday as something surprised me.
I would’ve expected “Jehoshaphat!” to have a Biblical origin, but as an exclamation/swear word substitute it appears to date from a western novel written in 1866.*
*Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!", a favorite expression of Yosemite Sam, may have a more recent origin.
There are people who seem to think the saying “Blood is thicker than water” is a corruption of an older quote “The Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” but the latter quote is a recent invention.