It popped into my head to wonder about the origin of the titular phrase: did it ascend to antiquity? Was its origin in the Greco-Roman classics, the Bible, ancient Sumer? Imagine my surprise when I turned to the OED (s.v. ox, entry revised 2005) and found:
1.c. Chiefly U.S. [Apparently in allusion to a response given by Martin Luther (1483–1546) at the Diet of Worms (1521).] In collocation with gored. An interest that is threatened or harmed. Chiefly in whose ox is gored.
1843 If the Democrats, under like circumstances, had made such a declaration, the welkin would have rung and rung again with anathemas against repudiation. But it makes a difference whose ox is gored.
Brooklyn Eagle & Kings County Democrat 7 August 2/21885 This is a doctrine which if allowed, will be adopted very much on the principle of whose ‘ox is gored’.
American Naturalist vol. 19 5931901 It makes a difference whose ox is gored, it seems.
F. Norris, Octopus ii. iv. 4421973 He was widely known as a dare-devil who carried out his intentions without caring whose ox was gored.
V. C. Ike, Potter’s Wheel (1974) ix. 681994 Every teaching institution will have its department of cultural studies, an ox not to be gored.
H. Bloom, Western Canon i. i. 15
(I note, with the usual sorrow and deprecation, that the 1885 American Naturalist citation, which you can see in situ here, has an actual author, and a famous one at that: Edward Drinker Cope.) So not only is it not an ancient and universally recognized phrase, it is “Chiefly U.S.” and only goes back to 1845! Anyone know the alleged Martin Luther source?
The phrase is totally unknown to me. When I read the post title I had no idea that it was going to be about an English idiom as opposed to, say, a Sanskrit parable.
There you go. How varied our mental worlds are! I learned the expression as a wee lad and assumed everyone was familiar with it.
It sounds like it is ultimately a reference to Exodus 21, specifically verses 35–36:
Luther’s version here.
I found a reference here, to Luther’s Works (1854 edition), v. 62, p. 449. That is the German edition, I believe. Hathi Trust has it, and probably Google Books and the Internet Archive do as well, but they have all defeated me. They are organized like book junkyards, not libraries.
the Bible, ancient Sumer?
The phrasing in Exodus is generally similar to laws dealing with damage caused by oxen and damage to different kinds of property in the code of Hammurabi and the Hittite law code, but I couldn’t find an exact parallel in a brief search. Maybe other LH readers can find a close Near Eastern parallel in some other texts. Compare for example especially Hammurabi § 251 here (“his neighborhood had made known to him that it was prone to goring”).
Are we not all, when you get right down to it, members of the awīlum class?
A translation of Luther’s speech at the Diet is here. The closest thing to a goring ox is a violent bull.
(There’s a note that, as usual, the most eloquent and famous part is of debatable authenticity.)
Finally got Hathi Trust to work, here:
So a cow, not an ox (or could Kuhe be either?), and whose cow was goring, not gored. Sounds like a folksy folktale.
>Are we not all, when you get right down to it, members of the awīlum class?
Speak for yourself. I’d give half a mina of silver to join the awilum class.
The offending animal is specifically an ox prone to goring (lol-tãadga) in the Mooré version. (Technically, this could mean an ox prone to getting gored, which strikes me as a drawback from the owner’s point of view. From the ox’s, too, I dare say.)
“Gore or be gored, I say,” says the ox.
Luther’s story about the cow echoes the prophet Nathan confronting king David. That is probably a widespread folk theme, to be found where such are indexed.
Arrant Rawlsianism, I calls it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
@Xerîb: On the subject of Exodus 21:35, the Mishnah discusses whose ox is gored by whose ox in Mishnah Bava Kamma 4:3-4. I’m not sure if I can properly render Hebrew, which I cannot read, but I’ll give it a try and proffer advance apologies in case my rendering fails.
I’m skeptical that either Martin Luther at Worms or U.S. politicians around 1843 could be thinking of the Mishnah, but what do I know?
OK, this version of the story, from 1822, makes more sense as the source of the expression than Luther’s asymmetric one:
Tally-ho!
1811, explaining the proverb “The case has altered, quoth Plowden.”
1796.
But Luther may be behind those, and David and Nathan (with a different ending) behind him. Or just life. I mean unjust life.
I’ve only encountered it in English. Wouldn’t even know how to say “gored” in German, other than just “injured”.
And the language/spelling presented by Hathi Trust is… abenteuerlich. An adventure to just look at. Today, singular Kuh, plural Kühe*; I wondered if umlaut is just omitted sometimes, as seems to be the case for übel, but the first line of p. 449 has gläuben instead of glauben for no discernible reason…
* Eine Kuh macht muh, viele Kühe machen Mühe: “one cow makes moo, many cows create a lot of work”…
@Xerîb: The exact Babylonian parallel to Exodus 21:35-36 is in the Laws of Eshunna, Sections 53-54. Again with apologies for likely imperfections in my copying of the cuneiform transliteration, which again I cannot read.
1732.
I’m going to start using the phrase “you are rendered a forewarned ox.”
It turns up a lot in spam:
** URGENT ACTION REQUIRED ** YOU HAVE BEEN RENDERED A FOREWARNED OX **
I notice that the farmer addresses the lawyer as “you”, but the lawyer addresses the other as “thou”. The lawyer being more formal and old-fashioned, I suppose?
Various sources point out that The Partial Judge was printed in Noah Webster’s Spelling Book, which explains how the underlying idea was familiar enough by 1843 for the Brooklyn Eagle & Kings County Democrat to allude to it so concisely.
The lawyer being more formal and old-fashioned, I suppose?—the lawyer is the farmer’s social superior; hence the asymmetric pronouns
I don’t see anything earlier than 1732, but I’ll point out that “The case is alter’d quoth Ploydon” appears in 1674 in an accusation that the army had changed its standards for judges in order to get Charles I executed. It fits the gored-ox story better than the “No priest, no mass” story,
mollymooly: What I wasn’t sure about is whether at that time the division was between familiar and honorific, as elsewhere in Europe, or whether it was a matter of register, “thou” signifying older conservative speech. Would a lawyer have addressed a judge as “thou”?
OK, this version of the story […] makes more sense as the source of the expression than Luther’s asymmetric one
It certainly does — that’s got to be the proximate source.
I don’t see anything earlier than 1732
On the other hand, here’s a version in A Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs Explained and Made Intelligible to the English Reader, by James Kelly. The lawyer’s name is Hackerton, and the story explains the proverb “That’s Hackerton’s cow.” Kelly relates it to the Plowden story.
Unfortunately the front matter didn’t get scanned (the 1818 edition has a dedication that isn’t in the scan), but GB says it’s from 1721, and this book agrees.
So I wonder why it only caught on in the US?
The British and Irish liked “The case has altered” better?
But we’re spreading it to the UK (ngram).
I’m with mollymooly, I’ve never heard the phrase in my life. I can’t even quite make out the intended usage from the examples.
From the title I assumed it was a reference to some classic I was unfamiliar with or maybe something Indo European.
I’m with mollymooly, I’ve never heard the phrase in my life. I can’t even quite make out the intended usage from the examples.
Me neither.
a reference to Exodus 21, specifically verses 35–36:
So amongst the penalties like Ex 21:22 “laws on assault,[10] a homicidal animal,[11] damage to livestock,[12] and theft.”.
What is it with all these brutes barging about and damaging/killing things? IANAL, but I think these Laws fail to cover an ox goring a pregnant wife, causing her to miscarry.
This is great! Plowden is Edmund Plowden (1519/20-1585); that Wikipedia page has a paragraph on “The case is altered”:
In A collection of English proverbs by John Ray (1670), there’s a version with Plowden and hogs:
@DM: I’ve only encountered it in English. Wouldn’t even know how to say “gored” in German, other than just “injured”.
I vaguely knew stoßen for a horned animal, but city folks today use the word only in the sense “shove”. In reports on Pamplona craziness it’s usually aufgespießt for “gored”.
But here’s a 2009 article in Focus that used both:
Stierhatz in Pamplona
Bulle tötet Mann mit Hornstoß
…
#
Das passierte in Pamplona seit 14 Jahren nicht mehr: Ein wild gewordener Bulle hat bei der traditionellen Stierhatz einen jungen Mann aufgespießt und getötet.
Der etwa 20 bis 25 Jahre alte Mann wurde am Freitag von einem Stier in Hals und Brust gestoßen, wie die Organisatoren des Volksfestes San Fermin auf ihrer Website erklärten.
#
@Y: To my knowledge, the idea that thou must be honorific because it’s old-fashioned and used to address God is 20th century; I very much doubt that an educated person from the early 19th century like the lawyer in the anecdote would have thought so or would have addressed a judge with Thou.
It depends. As far as ü and ö are concerned, In his early writings (until the mid-1520s) Luther followed the usage of the Imperial Chancery and never used ü or ö. Later ü and ö are increasingly used in his printed works (but even the 1545 bible occasionally has u/o instead of ü/ö. Luther’s manuscripts show him sticking to u/o.
So if the text is taken from one of Luther’s manuscripts, Kuhe for Kühe is not abenteuerlich; it’s simply the spelling he had learned (and it was the spelling used by the Imperial Chancery).
For more details, take a look at Carl ‘Franke’s 1888 Grundzüge der Schriftsprache Luthers..
Here is a case involving an ox as compensation in Plowden’s published work:
“in a Bill of Trespass the Case is, that a Bailiff known pledged an Ox of his Master for twelve Bushels of Wheat, so that if he did not pay &c. that then he should keep the Ox forever, and the Wheat came to the Use of the Master, and afterwards the Master disagreeing thereto took the Ox, and the other brought a Bill of Trespass, and all this Matter was found by Verdict, and by Award the Plaintiff recovered, for there it is held, that forasmuch as the Wheat came to the Master’s Use, and so sounded in Satisfaction before the Master took the Ox, he shall be bound thereby, seeing it was done by his known Bailiff; but there it seems, if the Wheat had not come to the Master’s Use, he should not have been bound, for then it had not been any Recompence.”
The commentaries, or Reports of Edmund Plowden …
https://archive.org/details/commentariesorr00plowgoog/page/n34/mode/2up?q=Ox
So I wonder why it only caught on in the US?—I think the ubiquity of Webster’s reader suffices to explain: wp says “by 1837, it had sold 15 million copies”; even if that’s an exaggeration the true number must be large.
“The case is altered” was familiar to me as an expression, either because of a vague memory of Ben Jonson’s play, or because (for obscure reasons) it’s a traditional pub name.
In yet further proof that All Threads are One, Plowden seems to have invented the (hypostatic) doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_politic
Plowden must have been a canny operator to survive as a politically influential out Catholic in those febrile times.
To expand on what Stu wrote:
aufspießen implies significant penetration of the body; I wouldn’t use it if the horns only grazed or just punctured the skin. stoßen in the context of animal attacks with horns or tusks refers to the act of hitting and doesn’t imply penetration of the skin. So, on the whole, aufspießen is nearer to “gore”. (But it has a much wider range of applications; it can also be used for penetration by weapons like spears or rapiers, or for sticking insects on needles, or for putting food items on a spit).
I think the ubiquity of Webster’s reader suffices to explain
Very likely.
What Hans said.
David E:
The pub name seems to have many different explanations attached, including the “Partial Judge” story; e.g. at a site called Yeovil’s Virtual Museum,
(I couldn’t find this at Notes & Queries for Somerset & Dorset.)
@dm, ulr
Grimm, DWB has under “glauben”
—
bis um 1800 steht neben der schriftsprachlich sanktionierten form glauben noch die umgelautete gläuben, die im älteren nhd. vor allem bei md. autoren häufig ist; obd. ist die umlautform vereinzelt fränk. bezeugt und erscheint sonst wohl nur unter einflusz der md. buchsprache:
—
https://www.dwds.de/wb/dwb/glauben
Franke, § 24:
He lists a number of instances of gleuben/glewben in Luther’s writings (including the 1545 bible translation).
I too grew up with “It all depends on whose ox is being gored” as a metaphor and would have assumed it was something that goes back to Aesop (or equivalent). Apparently not.
The farmer/lawyer story must be the source of the phrase, though it reads more like a criticism on the ability of the legal mind to find an argument for any claim (which is after all what lawyers are trained to do). So the OED still has the first actual example of the phrase.
Naturally, there’s a band called Diet of Worms.
Assuming that the farmer/lawyer story is the fons et origo (as seems likely), shouldn’t it rather be “whose ox has gored”?
Not so. In the Luther version, the goree’s owner is known throughout, the gorer’s not until the end. In the British version, the owners of the gorer and the goree are reversed midway.
One detail that I was slow to catch is that the ox (castrated) is gored, the bull (intact) gores. That’s one reason I was puzzled about Luther’s Kuh(e). Do cows occasionally get violent like that? I thought they spent their days posing for chocolate packages.
In the “Hackerton’s cow” version linked by Jerry at 10:19 pm above, it’s a heifer that gores an ox.
Ah, yes! And that gives two slight predates for Hackerton’s cow, 1713 (Edinburgh) and 1707 (London).
The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs dates the expression “Hackerton’s cow” to Kelly 1721. The The MacMillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Famous Phrases does as well, and explicitly connects it to Webster’s 1802 version, and to “depends whose ox is gored”.
I’ll be damned — I actually own a copy of the MacMillan Book of Proverbs, but I haven’t looked at it in years and am actually not sure where it is. Shows you how we’ve all been corrupted by the internet…
The Scottish National Dictionary predates it further, to the 1698 pamphlet, Mr. Kirkwood’s Plea Before the Kirk And Civil Judiciaries of Scotland (GBooks missed it due to a hyphen). The SND points out some variants, which upon search yield Hackerston’s Cow from 1711 and Halkerton’s Cow from 1690.
The original Halkerton could be an actual Lord Haulkerton, of whom the story is told here. The dates in that account are muddled, but they can be made to fit the appearance of the story in the late 1600s. The story must be older, as witness Luther, but that’s when it was attached to Haulkerton.
P.S. Hat, no worries, you are but a blogger. The editors of the OED damn better know where their copy of MacMillan’s is.
My tombstone will read HE WAS BUT A BLOGGER.
I started writing “a mild-mannered blogger” but decided that was wrong, even if it reads nice.
Ah, so maybe the forms with umlaut are actually the regular ones, the ones without show blocking of umlaut by labial consonants in Upper German, and Standard German ended up with a chaotic mixture? (Hüpfen lacks umlaut in my dialect, for example.)
(*-jan had already become -ên in OHG, though. To actually find an i you need Old Saxon.)
They’re the leading* cause of death among German tourists in Austria. Do not approach a calf on a pasture, especially not with a dog.
* give or take a few zeroes
The closest themes in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index are:
Both are followed by references to tales exemplifying the themes, from all over.
Yes, but if you take a look at the 2nd edition of Braune’s Althochdeutsche Grammatik (1891, almost contemporaneous), you’ll find “Erste schwache conjugation (verba auf -jan)” So Franke simply followed the usage of what would become the standard OHG grammar. And he was writing a grammar of a variant of what is now known as Frühneuhochdeutsch — the language of Luther’s (authorized) printed texts and extant manuscripts.
Both are followed by references to tales exemplifying the themes, from all over.
The Ecclesiastes of Erasmus cited, and an English translation from Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres, are here in parallel (“haec…alia res est” / “this is another matter”)
The same author lists other analogues including Luther here
“haec…alia res est”
Exactly Luther’s “das ist ein ander Ding”! Except Luther’s magistrate simply sent the peasant woman away empty-handed.
Man, there must have been a lot of ox-goring going on over the millennia.
I suppose the modern equivalent is the business model of the industry of lawyers advertising services to recover damages for people hurt in vehicle accidents. (“Sue-the-bastards lawyers,” I call them.)
If you hit my car with yours and give me a whiplash, my lawyers are going to sue the pants off you. But if a lawyer’s car hits me and gives me a whiplash, the case is altered. Thus, it makes a difference whose neck is whiplashed (and by whom).
All peoples have an ox idol, but it matters whose ox is G-d.
Too exactly, in fact – today, at least, it’s quite unidiomatic (even if you restore the ending in anderes), so it looks like Luther calqued it. What you’d say today is das ist etwas anderes.
How about Was anderes ist des Schulzen Kuh (from a 19th-century Deutsches sprichwörter-lexikon): is that still a known proverb?
Not to me.
(I was going to add that Schulzen were apparently never a thing where I’m from, but that’s actually irrelevant. I know most proverbs/”common” sayings only from reading; many are actually taught in schools and to foreign learners because they’re not in fact in common spoken use but do occur in writing. So the fact that I didn’t know this one does suggest it’s thoroughly obsolete. Never mind the archaic grammar – the preposed genitive.)
The MacMillan version references “Aesop’s fable” of The Partial Judge (“partial” as opposed to “impartial” rather than opposed to “whole”). But does the story actually go back to Aesop? The title of (Thomas) Bewick’s collection has “Select Fables of Æsop and Others” (bold mine). Unless an ancient Greek version turns up, it seems plausible that Bewick (1753-1828) came up with the story from the contemporary folktale.
“Æsop’s Tales” those days was typically an “enhanced” version: Aesop, plus whatever else could be tacked on. Grey’s The Complete Fabulist of 1732, linked above, says in its preface, “The bulk of the fables we have in prose, we are indebted to an ingenious old gentleman for, called Æsop, who published them about the time the Roman empire began to rise out of obscurity.” Later on he adds, “Our English poets, it must be acknowledged, have gone further, and by their most curious and valuable inventions, have greatly improved this useful branch of literature; particularly Mr Gay, Mr Moore, Mr Cunningham, and some others.” This particular story isn’t in the writings of those last three, as far as I can tell.
Not to me — but the only proverbs I ever knew are the ones taken from Schiller’s plays. This one also has an iambic ring to it and may be taken from a 19th century play. Dramatists all wanted to sound like Schiller at the time (Goethe was too complex and not patriotic enough). The preposed genitive also points to a literary origin. The common people doesn’t talk like that.
Btw, speaking of Aesop, Luther also translated a small selection of Aesopian fables.
Wander has:
—
9. Des Schulzen Kuh und eines andern Kühe sind zweierlei Kühe, sagte der Feldschütz. – Eiselein, 557; Blum, 427; Pistor., V, 22; Körte, 5436; Simrock, 9278; Braun, I, 4005.
Satire auf die saubern Gerichtshöfe, welche dem Reichen und Angesehenen, der zum Schadenersatz verurtheilt werden sollte, durchhelfen, während sie den Geringern den nämlichen Schaden streng ersetzen lassen. Nach Erasmus hat das Sprichwort folgenden Ursprung. In einem seeländischen Dorfe verwundete einst der Stier des Schulzen die Kuh eines Bauern so, dass sie sterben musste. Der Bauer ging darauf zum Schulzen und berichtete gegen die Wirklichkeit Folgendes: »Ich habe das Unglück gehabt, dass mein Stier über den Graben gesprungen ist und eure Kuh getödtet hat, was ist in diesem Falle Rechtens« – »Dass ihr die Kuh bezahlt«, erwiderte der Schulz ohne weiteres. »Aber«, versetzte hierauf der Bauer, »es findet just das Gegentheil statt; der Stier war euer und die getödtete Kuh die meinige.« – »Nun dann«, meinte der verlegene Schulze, »hat es nichts zu sagen. Ein anderes ist des Schulzen Kuh. Schaden wird nicht ersetzt, denn des Schulzen Kuh und eines andern Kuh sind zweierlei Kühe.« Auch bei nichtdeutschen Völkern sind die Schulzen nicht aufs beste angeschrieben. Die Slawen, deren Wojwoden auf drei Jahre gewählt wurden, lassen ihren Schulzen ein Jahr sich gütlich thun und zwei Jahr jagen. Legen ihm also amtliche Unthätigkeit zur Last und schreiben ihm die Neigung zu, dafür sich selbst zu pflegen und seinem Vergnügen nachzugehen oder, wie viele Sprichwörter behaupten, sein Amt zu benutzen, um sich Privatvortheile zu verschaffen, sich auf Kosten der Gemeinde zu bereichern. So sagen die Russen: Den Starost frage nicht nach seinem Hause, sondern nach seinem Palast. (Altmann V, 112.) Der Starost nimmt uns nur das Kummt, aber der Gutsherr (s.d.) auch den Gaul. (Altmann V, 125.) Wer die innige Verbindung zwischen Gutsherrn und Schulzen in Deutschland kennt, wird das vorstehende russische Sprichwort verstehen. Die Russen empfehlen: Den Starosten musst du zum Freunde erhalten, denn seine Macht im Dorfe ist grösser als die des Zaren im Reiche. (Altmann V, 90.) Aber seine Freundschaft zu behalten ist kostspielig, denn die Russen behaupten: Wenn du dem Starosten neun Würste gibst und eine im Rauch fang hängen lässt, so hast du ihm keine gegeben. (Altmann V, 105.) – Im Sinne des obigen Sprichworts: Was anders ist des Schulzen Kuh, heisst es jüdisch-deutsch: Dem Rebben’s (Rabbiners) Kuh. Es wird erzählt, es sei am Sabbat eine Kuh auf dem Felde wiedergefunden worden, was an den Ruhetagen verboten ist. Der Rabbiner des Ortes, der darüber befragt wurde, sprach das Urtheil: »Die Kuh muss gesteinigt werden.« »Aber die Kuh gehört euch«, sagte man: »So bringt sie schnell nach Hause«, erwiderte er. s. Büchmann, 8. Aufl., S. 5-7.
Böhm.: Rychtář rok hoví, a dvĕ léta loví. (Čelakovsky, 363.) Holl.: De koeijen van den schout gaan voor. (Harrebomée, I, 422b.) Lat.: Duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem. (Pistor., IV, 11.)
—
https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle=Wander&lemid=S01563
Like ulr and DM, I have never encountered that proverb.
Duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem
This one has a German equivalent that I actually have heard being used in real life: Wenn zwei das gleiche tun, ist es noch lange nicht dasselbe.
@Y: “Æsop’s Tales” those days was typically an “enhanced” version: Aesop, plus whatever else could be tacked on.
Isn’t that also true these days? In a quick look, I didn’t see any collections that included only fables with known Greek or Roman sources.
Well, in Germany at least there are at least two such editions, the bilingual editions published by Reclam and as part of the Sammlung Tusculum.
In the English speaking world, the editor/translator of the OWC edition of Aesop, Laura Gibbs, has a website which includes Greek texts (from the editions of Perry and Chambry).
Even in antiquity, there was never anything approaching a “canonical” edition of Aesop (who may be completely fictional, anyway). A prose collection created in the 4th c. BC is lost. A poetic version created by Babrios in the 1st c. AD survives only partially. Later prose versions seem to be derived from Babrios.
One allegedly Aesopian fable (The Eagle and the Fox) first appears in the fragments of the poetry of Archilochos (7th c. BC).
Kinda like “Webster’s Dictionary”.
Wouldn’t a canonical version of Aesop be like a canonical version of Katrina Kenison’s Best American Short Stores of 1998? It would prove those were the stories Aesop chose to include…
It would still be cool to find an Aesopian version, if one ever existed.
Another reminder of why I continue to hope that the Herculaneum library has something beyond the works of Epicurean philosophers. Of course they’ll only create more questions that can’t be answered. But I want MY questions answered.
A stranded preposition!
That 1732 book title presumably intends the older meaning of “fabulist” as “scholar or reteller of fables” rather than the more recent meaning of “pathological liar.”
@ulr: Thanks, it’s helpful that Gibbs’s book gives sources. However, it’s not limited to antiquity. For instance, “The Wolf, the Fox* and the Lion Dividing the Spoils” is from a medieval compilation and alludes to cardinals’ red hats.
I didn’t see anything relevant in the also helpful index under bull, bullock, cow, ox, or king, and there was nothing for judge or lawyer. But who knows what animal the story might be disguised with?
*Where’s my Oxford comma?