They Never Said That

The popular culture has always had an uncanny ability to misuse, misinterpret, misrepresent, and misquote. Its adherents believe that Columbus discovered America and George Washington had wooden teeth and dog saliva cleanses flesh wounds.

The other day I heard a goofy radio guy say, “Till death do we part.” He thought “do us part” was ungrammatical. (He was wrong: it’s not we who are doing the parting. The line means “until death parts
us.”)

Here are some other familiar sayings that have run into a little turbulence along the way …

• “Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” The words “and not a” can’t be found in the famous couplet from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798). Here is how Coleridge wrote it: “Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.”

• “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” There are several memorable lines from Alexander Pope’s 1711 poem “An Essay on Criticism.” This is almost one of them. But Pope wrote that “a little learning” is a dangerous thing. Knowledge and learning are hardly synonyms.

• “Gild the lily” is supposedly from Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of King John. The correct quotation is, “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily.”

• “Come up and see me some time” was actress Mae West’s signature line, but the bodacious blonde didn’t say it. In She Done Him Wrong (1933), Ms. West says to Cary Grant, “Why don’t you come up some time and see me.”

• “Play it again, Sam.” That line might put a lump in your throat if you’ve ever seen the 1942 movie Casablanca. But it’s nowhere to be found in that great film. What Ingrid Bergman says is, “Play it once, Sam. For old times’ sake.”

• “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Everyone knows this patronizing utterance by Sherlock Holmes to his overmatched colleague Dr. Watson, but the line appears nowhere in any of the books and tales by Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m told it comes from the 1929 film The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Watson says, “Amazing, Holmes.” Holmes replies, “Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary.”

• “Beam me up, Scotty” was never said by William Shatner’s Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek TV series.

• “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.” This is a misquotation from William Congreve’s play The Morning Bride. Congreve (1670-1729) wrote “savage breast,” not “beast.” I’m guessing the error can be attributed in part to good old American prudery, as demonstrated by this passage from a recent newspaper column: “He actually wrote ‘the savage breast.’ But this being a family newspaper, we went with the popular misquote.” Very good, sir. And tonight’s special is mesquite-grilled chicken chest.

—Tom Stern

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