OCCUPY THE SKY

The Pedant Class and Your Stars

’TIMES are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”

If you think that’s a quote from one of Donald Trump’s blistering election speeches, you are wrong. Google it and you will find dozens of scholarly sites stating that it was said by Cicero, the Roman politician, lawyer and orator, who died in 43BC.

But that is also wrong. An investigation by the team from Quoteinvestigator.com (a website to warm the heart of every pedant) found that Cicero was given credit for the saying only in 2001.

Before that it was mostly attributed to an Assyrian king, who was believed to have had it carved on a tablet somewhere between 5000 and 3500BC. A few rebels prefer the theory that it was inscribed on papyrus by an Egyptian priest. There is no proof at all that anyone ever said or wrote it.

Some say William Shakespeare’s plays were not written by William Shakespeare, but regardless of who wrote it, Henry IV Part 2 was first performed in 1600 and contains this line: “. . . these villains will make the word as odious as the word occupy, which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted.”

What the words possibly written by Shakespeare have in common with the saying not said by Cicero is their striking sense of modernity. People are always moaning about disobedient children and bad memoirs, and of late they are also griping about occupiers and occupations.

In Shakespeare’s play, the character complaining about how “occupy” has been mistreated is a prostitute by the name of Doll Tearsheet. I don’t believe there is any connection between Doll’s surname and the more recent use of “tearsheet”: a page (usually an advertisement) torn from a publication (usually a magazine) by a person (usually a fashion model) wishing to keep proof of her beauty/fame/existence in a portfolio for posterity.

But back to occupy. Since the 14th century it has meant “to take up space or time”. It comes from the Latin occupare, to seize or possess — a sense in which it is still used when referring to an army of hostiles invading a territory not their own. The use of adjectives such as “hostile” and “friendly” as nouns annoys some pedants but it has its advantages in warfare, when you need to know your hostiles from your friendlies.

There is more than one kind of occupation, as every head hunter knows. The Occupy Movement, seen by some as hostile, began on New York’s Wall Street on September 17 2011 as a protest against inequality, greed and corruption. It quickly packed its bags for other climes and became a catchphrase for groups seeking social change all over the world.

Occupy Sandy was a disaster relief group formed to help victims of Hurricane Sandy in the US in 2012. Doll Tearsheet would have snorted a flagon of mead through her nose if she’d heard this name.

When Doll complains about “occupy” being “ill sorted” (today we’d say abused) she is referring to the slang use to which occupy was relegated in the 1500s. In Doll’s day, “occupy” was a euphemism for “fornicate”.

This wore off after a while — perhaps because “Occupy off!” does not roll easily off the tongue when you want to yell at someone in the traffic — and occupy returned to its original meaning. Must have been fun while it lasted, though.

I don’t think supporters of #OccupyLuthuliHouse had Doll’s rude thoughts in mind when they mounted their campaign, but those on the #DefendLuthuliHouse side of the fence might find the word equally odious.

Whichever position you occupy, it will be interesting to see how long occupy occupies its new place in our lexicon. LS

‘Occupy off!’ does not roll easily off the tongue