File under “Up or Shut Up, Put (Part I)”: Winston Churchill also is not always quoted accurately.
A fun toy you can find on the Internet is a Shakespearean Insult Generator, a program that grabs one from column A and one from data bucket B and one from text field C to come up with such contumely as “Thou pukey motley-minded baggage!” Pukey? Look it up—damn if it isn’t really Shakespearean. Baggage, too, by the way.
I wonder if the creators of such generators worry about ending their insults with prepositions. I ask because I’d like to see them write a Churchill Preposition Witticism Generator. Winnie’s clever “that is the sort of nonsense up with which I shall not put” is almost never quoted correctly, and even the anecdote varies wildly in location, situation, and cast of characters. So, we need a little program that would randomly select items from the following lists—all variations I found on the bullshitternet and in print and in asking my
neighbor odd Gloria actual quote.
As the story goes .
[the speaker]
Churchill
[the word to]
to
two doors down—to possibly generate the
[the action]
wrote scribbled sent a memo said
red-pencilled
[the recipient]
an editor a reporter a secretary
a member of parliament a civil servant a heckler a speechwriter a student
11 o
Bill Brohaugh
[the first words]
This is
[the variable bombast]
arrant pedantry
the kind of arrant pedantry
the sort of pedantry
a bit of arrant pedantry
the type of errant pedantry
an objection
a proposition
a situation
a practice
a rule
something
insubordination
English
the kind of English the sort of English the sort of thing the kind of thing one thing
the sort of nonsense the sort of criticism the sort of errant criticism the sort of bloody nonsense the kind of tedious nonsense the kind of pedantic nonsense the kind of offensive impertinence the kind of impertinence
Table captionEverything You Know About English Is Wrong
777
|
[the operative phrase] |
[the actor] |
|
up with which |
I |
|
we |
|
|
[the negative] |
[the final word] |
|
will not |
put |
|
shall not |
|
|
cannot |
At least in all the examples I found, the put stays put.
Spin the wheels on this quotational slot machine a million times, a billion times, perhaps even an infinite number of times, and you won’t get an accurate quote, because there are no options for “[the speaker]” other than Churchill. It’s not likely that he originated the quote, and there’s scant evidence that he said it at all, even to repeat it. The quote is likely the work of some wag—and in fact, the first mention of the clever protest against pedantry is recorded in 1942, attributing it to an unnamed “original writer” of a memo in a “certain Government department” in response to a “pedant” who questioned a lonely trailing preposition. Churchill’s name isn’t added to the story until six years later.
Even winstonchurchill.org calls the tale “apocryphal,” and concludes its discussion of the quote by saying, “Verdict: An invented phrase put in Churchill’s mouth.” Or, “An invented phrase into which Churchill’s mouth put.”
112
Bill Brohaugh