filibuster

Still image featuring actors Claude Rains and Jimmy Stewart from the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

24 September 2020

As we know it today, a filibuster is a procedural move to delay or block a piece of legislation in the U.S. Senate. But it is a word that is intertwined with American history, and in particular with colonialism, slavery, and the oppression of Black people, from before the American Revolution through to the present day.

Traditionally, debate in the U.S. Senate was unlimited, senators could continue to speak on a topic as long as they actually hold the floor, and there are examples of groups of and even individual senators have blocked legislation for days and even permanently. In 1957, then-Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina set the record for an individual filibuster by speaking for 24 hours, 18 minutes in an attempt to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The bill eventually passed. This vision of how a filibuster operates is perhaps best exemplified in Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which newly minted Senator Jefferson Smith, played by James Stewart, filibusters for 25 hours before collapsing from exhaustion.

But today the filibuster is limited to legislation and cannot be used to block confirmation of executive branch or judicial appointees, and senators do not have to continuously speak. All that is needed is a showing that there are not 60 votes (out of 100 senators) to invoke cloture and end debate. If there aren’t the 60 votes, the senate drops the matter and goes on to other business. And it seems likely that the Senate will change its procedures to disallow the filibuster entirely in the near future.

Originally, however, a filibuster had nothing to do with parliamentary procedure; a filibuster was a pirate or privateer. The word comes from the Dutch vrijbuiter, literally freebooter, as in booty, or someone with license to plunder, either from a government or from being an outlaw with nothing to lose. There are cognates in many Germanic languages. The modern parliamentary term, however, is a nineteenth-century borrowing of the Spanish filibustero.

The form frebetter appears in a 19 July 1570 letter from Michael Coulweber to Thomas Gresham:

And for so much as I was spoyled by the waye in cominge towards England by the Duke of Alva his frebetters maye it please the Queene’s Majestie and your honnor to consider me therein to her Majestie, and your honour’s pleasure.

The introduction of the < l > is uncertain. It may be from the Dutch vlieboot or Spanish flibote, literally fly-boat, a small, fast boat favored by many pirates. (The Spanish word is almost certainly borrowed from the Dutch; the sixteenth-century Caribbean was awash with such linguistic exchanges.) Although, the earliest instances of the English word with the < l > are references to armies or bands of soldiers that plunder, not pirates at sea. Flibutor appears by 1591 in Garrard and Hitchcock’s The Arte of Warre:

Merchants, victualers, artificers, and such others, as bring wares to the campe, he must take order that they be courteously & fauourably vsed, to the intent that they may vtter their wares willingly & safely, foreseeing that they be paid with good money, vsing towards them a louing countenance, & procuring them a conuoy & sufficient gard, as well for their cōming as for their departing, to the intent they may with good wils, be occasioned to returne the more speedely, & so remaine altogether satisfied, without suspect of being robbed or spoiled of theeues and flibutors, for which he ought diligently & sufficiently to prouide, since that by their meanes an armie is made abundant of all things propre, commodious and necessary.

The form flibustier shows a French influence. That form appears in the 1699 A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew:

Flibustiers, West-Indian Pirates, or Buekaneers, Free-booters.

After these early uses, the word largely drops from English usage, except for the occasional historical reference.

The word reappears in nineteenth-century America, a borrowing from the Spanish filibustero, which also traces back to the same Dutch root. It is applied to Commodore Matthew Perry during the Mexican-American War. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune of 10 December 1846:

A Filibuster.—We expect to hear by the next arrival from the Gulf that Com. Perry has made a descent upon some important point on the Mexican coast. He left Tampico on the 2d inst. with the U.S. steamship Mississippi, the steamer Vixen, sloop of war John Adams, and schooners Bonita and Petrel, on an expedition unknown. The mystery observed in regard to the destination of this force augurs the importance of the service that has been assigned it, but Com. Perry is one of those officers who does not keep friend or foe long in suspense as to what he is about. For his recent exploit before Tabasco the Vera Cruz papers denounced him as a filibuster. We apprehend that they will have to invent a bigger word to characterize his future operations. Filibuster, though, sounds like a term of significance—it may be a good word, like “nobled queen,” yet we doubt if it will answer the coming occasions of the Mexican press.

And it comes into widespread use during the 1850s in reference to bands of American mercenaries who raided, plundered, and intervened in the politics of Latin American and Caribbean countries, in particular Cuba. There are quite literally tens of thousands instances of this sense of filibuster in U.S. newspapers during the period 1850–60. An early example of this sense is from the New Orleans Weekly Delta of 24 June 1850:

An American Filibuster.

The fashionable word for the members of the late Expedition to Cuba, is filibuster—the Anglicised filibustero of the Spaniards. Terms, bestowed in reproach, are often accepted as compliments by those to whom they are applied. So it is with the gallant young men who formed the late Expedition to Cuba. Conscious of the honesty of their motives, they find considerable amusement in the high-sounding, terrible epithets of the ferocious Spaniards and their American allies. Thus, therefore, the word “Filibuster” has acquired a significance and popularity, which is likely to give it considerable run. It has entirely superseded the word “Liberator.”

Filibuster also quickly developed an extended sense, referring to politicians who were extreme and bellicose in their views, particularly over the question of slavery. This sense is in place by 1851. From the Georgia Telegraph of 26 August 1851:

Now, every body at the South has agreed upon the unconstitutionality of the Wilmot Proviso; and all parties—from the lowest soap tail to the most rampant fire eater—from the most obsequious of the Fillmorebusters to the most ultra of the Filibusters—have declared that a vote of Congress directly excluding the Southerner from the territories gained by common exertion, valor, and treasure, would be ample cause of immediate “disruption.”

The term Fillmorebuster is a nonce word, a play on filibuster, referring to President Millard Fillmore. Fillmore was a Whig who supported slavery as a means to keep the union together, helping to negotiate the Compromise of 1850, which permitted territories to decide for themselves whether or not to permit slavery, and signing the Fugitive Slave Act. So, a Fillmorebuster would be a tepid opponent of or a tacit supporter of slavery. The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful attempt to undo the Compromise of 1850 and prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories.

The filibuster would continue to be tactic of choice by those senators wishing to deny Blacks their Civil Rights and maintain White supremacy through to the present day.

Along with being a label for a bellicose politician, filibuster was also used as a verb meaning to engage in incendiary rhetoric. We can see this verb sense in the Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser of 30 January 1852:

The government of Great Britain would never consider or receive resolutions that accompanied a prayer for mercy [for Irish political exiles] with an attack on her policy, or disrespectful or denunciatory language. His idea was that if the Senate merely proposed to filibuster a little on general principles, there would be no harm in adopting the resolutions of General Cass; but if there was a sincere wish to intercede effectually for the exiles, the Senate had better think twice before taking any such action.

And it was used as an adjective referring to such rhetoric. From the New Orleans Daily Picayune of 9 February 1852:

I perceive that Gen. Cass is endeavoring to head him off by a similar course in the U.S. Senate, where he introduced a resolution, and made quite a filibuster speech on the subject yesterday.

So far, filibuster had shifted in meaning from pirate to mercenary to bellicose politician to bellicose speech. And in the 1860s it would acquire the current sense of blocking legislative action by continuing debate. This sense is in place by 1863 when the New Haven Daily Palladium of 17 January 1863 writes this about the New York state legislature:

There is great excitement in the Assembly. The Hall is crowded. The main business so far has been filibustering, and speeches to stave off a vote.

The tactic was widespread throughout the United States during the 1860s, as can be seen from the following reports.

Missouri, 18 January 1864:

Mr. Wingate said this bill must be acted upon, and by postponing it from day to day, and filibustering to defeat it, we failed in our duty to our constituents and sacrificed the best interests of the State.

Kentucky, 22 January 1864:

The election of a Senator was prevented by the Senate today by filibustering until the hour of adjournment.

New Jersey, 25 January 1865:

Mr. L. Abbott moved that the House adjourn. Lost—29 to 30—the Democrats voting in the affirmative and the Unionists in the negative.

A system of “filibustering” was then entered into after which a motion to adjourn until Monday evening prevailed.

U.S. Congress, 31 January 1865:

Mr. Farnsworth, of Illinois, noticed the comment upon himself in the Washington correspondence of the Chicago Tribune, written, he said, by an employee of the House, in which he, with others, were represented as having filibustered to prevent the passage of Mr. Washburne’s resolution reducing tax on printing paper, and as being conspicuous among those who desired to continue the tax on knowledge.

Eventually, most parliamentary bodies would enact rules to eliminate the filibuster, but the practice continues in the U.S. Senate.

At its heart, the filibuster is deeply undemocratic, allowing a minority of senators to hold the nation hostage. Given the word’s roots in piracy, this should not be surprising.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“An American Filibuster.” New Orleans Weekly Delta, 24 June 1850, 8. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Baltimore Correspondence.” The Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 9 February 1852, 1. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

B. E. A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew in Its Several Tribes of Gypsies, Beggers, Thieves, Cheats &c. London: W. Hawes, 1699. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Burgon, John William. The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, vol. 2 of 2. London: Robert Jennings, 1839. 360. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“The Canvass in the 2d District. Mr. Johnson’s Politics.” The Georgia Telegraph (Macon, Georgia), 26 August 1851. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“A Filibuster.” Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 10 December 1846, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Garrard, William and Captain Hitchcock. The Arte of Warre. London: Roger Warde, 1591, 236. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“The Irish Exiles.” Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser (Alexandria, Virginia), 30 January 1852, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The Kentucky Senatorship.” Boston Evening Transcript, 22 January 1864, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Missouri Legislature.” Daily Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 18 January 1864, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“New Jersey Legislature.” West Jersey Press (Camden, New Jersey), 25 January 1865, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“New York Speakership.” The Daily Palladium (New Haven, Connecticut), 17 January 1863, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. filibuster, n. and filibuster, v.; third edition, June 2008, s.v. freebooter, n.

“Thirty-Eighth Congress—2d Session.” The Daily Age (Philadelphia), 31 January 1865, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures, 1939.

faggot

23 September 2020

How did a word meaning a bundle of sticks become an epithet for a gay man? It was process of gradual semantic shift over several centuries and continents. This sense of the word is, of course, derogatory and offensive, although gay men have reclaimed it to some extent, and use among themselves is positive in some contexts.

The English word comes to us from the Anglo-Norman faget, meaning a bundle of firewood. The French word appears as early as 12 December 1296 in an order to the Reeve of Pyrford, England from the Abbot of Westminster:

Nus vous comandoms qe vous [ach]atez un miller de busche e demi miller de fagot e facez karier a Westm' en haste.

(We order that you purchase a thousand pieces of wood and five hundred faggots and carry them to Westminster in haste.)

It’s recorded in English a few years later in an inventory from c. 1312. The document is in Latin, but switches to the English word for this item:

xvj capones ij s.viij d. ix gallinæ ix d. iiijc fagotis xviij d. maremium xx s.

(16 capons 2 shillings, 8 pence; 9 hens 9 pence; 96 faggots 18 pence; timber 20 shillings)

Faggots were often associated with burning people at the stake. An early example can be found in the version of the Book of John Mandeville found in the manuscript London, British Library, Egerton 1982, copied prior to 1425. I include the full context of the passage because it is a typical example of a miracle found in medieval saints’ lives:

And betwene þis kirk and þe citee es þe felde floridus. And it es called felde florischt for als mykille as a faire ȝung maiden was blamed wiþ wrang þat scho schuld hafe done fornicacioun, for whilk cause scho was demed to be brint in þat place. To þe whilk place scho was ledd and bun by a stake and fagotes of thornes and oþer wode laid aboute hir. And when scho saw þe wodde begynne to brynne scho made hir praier til oure lord þat as scho was noȝt gilty of þat thing he wald helpe hir and saue hir, þat it myght be knawen tille alle men. And when scho had þus prayd scho went into þe fire. And alssone it was oute. And þase braunchez þat ware brynnand become reed roseres, and þase braunchez þat ware noȝt kindled become whyte roseres full of roses. And þase ware þe first rosez and roseres þat any man sawe. And þus was þe mayden saued thurgh þe grace of Godd.

(And between this church and the city is the flowery field. And it is called the florished field because as much as a fair, young maiden was falsely accused that she had committed fornication, for which cause shew as judged to be brought to that place. To that place she was led and prepared by a stake, and faggots of thorns and other wood were laid about her. And when she saw the wood begin to burn, she made her prayer to our lord that as she was not guilty of that thing he would help her and save her, so that it might be known to all people. And when she had thus prayed, she went into the fire. And immediately it was out. And those branches that were burning became red rosebushes, and those branches that were not kindled became white rosebushes full of roses. And these were the first roses that anyone had seen. And thus was the maiden saved through the grace of God.)

Faggot would become a metonym for burning at the stake, as can be seen from this from the 1583 version of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, a book that celebrates Protestant martyrs of the Reformation. This passage is from the April 1554 disputation between Catholic interrogator Hugh Weston and Protestant cleric Hugh Latimer. Latimer was subsequently burned at the stake:

Remember what they haue bene that were the beginners of your doctrine, none but a few flying Apostataes, runnyng out of Germany for feare of the fagot.

There’s a commonly touted popular etymology that the use of faggot as an epithet for a gay man comes from burning homosexual men at the stake. While the word was closely associated with the method of execution, it was never used as a signifier of the person so executed. Nor were men in medieval Europe typically burned at the stake for engaging in homosexual acts—that punishment was usually reserved for those found guilty of heresy or witchcraft. And, the epithet appears on another continent many centuries after the practice of burning at the stake ended. Instead the epithet develops from a different source.

By the early eighteenth century, faggot had come to be used as an epithet for a woman, probably from the idea of it being burdensome to carry, akin to the phrase the old ball and chain. We can see this slang sense of a woman in a poem found in Edward Ward’s 1722 The Parish Gutt’lers:

Poor Knocky sneaking to another
Tavern, there met a Vestry Brother,
And other chosen Friends to treat,
Charging whate’er they drank or eat,
Good Wine, fat White-legs roast and boil’d,
To one Dol Gulpin, big with Child,
A Faggot-Drab beneath their Care,
That lives no mortal Man knows where.

The use of faggot to mean a gay man is originally an Americanism and appears in the early twentieth century, an extension of the epithet for a woman, emphasizing the stereotype of effeminacy, much like queen or fairy. This sense appears in a 7 April 1913 letter by John Reed, in which he uses the word to refer to a drag act:

Mr. Max Hoffmann is very anxious to put on their vaudeville revue, to do this it will be necessary to cut out the “Garden of Girls” scene, [...] also to eliminate “The Fagot Number.”

There are a number of false, popular etymologies for the epithet faggot. We’ve already dispensed with the burning at the stake one. Another is that it comes from the Yiddish feygele, literally little bird, and also used as slang for a gay man. But the Yiddish slang sense isn’t recorded until 1967 and is probably a play on the English epithet, which was well established by then. Another is that it arises from British public (i.e., private) schools where younger students serve as fags to older ones, performing menial chores for them, with the implication that sexual acts might be included. This schoolboy jargon term comes from the verb to fag, meaning to work, to toil, and never had any currency in the United States, where the gay epithet first appears.

So, the semantic changes over the centuries go from a bundle of sticks, to a burden, to a woman, to an effeminate man.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Foxe, John. Actes and Monuments. London: John Daye, 1583, 1459. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, faggot, n.1, feigele, n.

Harvey, Barbara. Documents Illustrating the Rule of Walter de Wenlok, Abbot of Westminster, 1283–1307, vol. 1 of 2. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1965, 82. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. fagot, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2018, s.v. faggot, n. and adj.

Raine, James. Wills and Inventories, vol. 1 of 4. London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1835, 18. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Seymour, M.C., ed. The Egerton Version of Mandeville’s Travels. Early English Text Society (EETS), no. 336. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010, 39. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Ward, Edward. The Parish Gutt’lers. London: 1722, 48. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

clickbait

22 September 2020

We’ve all seen clickbait, those titillating internet headlines that entice us to follow the link only find vacuous content, or worse. The etymology is rather obvious: click + bait. The term dates to at least 1999, but I suspect earlier uses are to be found in some yet-to-be-indexed corners of the internet. And of course, the idea of using an enticing headline or magazine cover to get us to buy a publication is much, much older.

The earliest use I’m aware of is from Network Magazine of December 1999. Here the clickbait link is to malware, not to ad-driven content:

In January 1997, under the hot glare of lights from the TV station Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, three German hackers gave a dramatic demonstration of mobile code and the havoc it can wreak. First a “clickbait” Web page with the message “Click here to become a millionaire in five minutes” was shown. Next, the program’s presenter (posing as a user) clicked on the link, unwittingly downloading ActiveX controls. When she subsequently opened Quicken, a background task clandestinely generated an electronic fund transfer, payable to “Bad Boy.”

For the next ten years, the term clickbait had a rather low profile, seldom appearing in published articles. But it pops up in June 2009 in Business Insider, which now uses the term in the familiar sense of a news headline that entices one to read pointless content:

Reason magazine compiled the "The 10 most absurd Time magazine covers from the last 40 years" and the coverlines feel downright clickbait-y if you ask us. We like it.

The two earliest Time covers on Reason magazine’s list are “The Occult Revival” from 19 June 1972 and “The Porno Plague” from 5 April 1976.

And there is this from June 2013, titled “Why I Hate Buzzfeed—A Rant on Page-View Journalism,” that explains the business model behind clickbait:

These are headlines designed to fuel page-view journalism, something we call clickbait. They want you to click on the link so they can waste more of your time and thus get money from their advertisers and sponsors. Sure, any online news org has ads to support the running of their site and paying their staff, but BuzzFeed is designed around this concept instead of being forced to rely on it as many news orgs are. As such, BuzzFeed keeps your attention with idiotic clickbait that serves no edifying aim. It‘s not journalism, it‘s not purposeful, and it‘s just plain stupid.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Angel, Jonathan. “Mobile Code Security.” Network Magazine, 14.12, December 1999, 38. ProQuest.

Balko, Radley and Jeff Winkler. “The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years.” Reason.com, 10 June 2009.

Carlson, Nicholas. "The 10 Most Absurd Time Magazine Covers from The Last 40 Years." Business Insider, 12 June 2009. Nexis Uni.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2016, s.v. clickbait, n.

“Why I Hate Buzzfeed—A Rant on Page-View Journalism.” University Wire, 21 June 2013. ProQuest U.S. Newsstream.

face

21 September 2020

Face is a word that has many meanings in English, but here I am only going to focus on a few.

The word comes from the Latin facies and could mean one’s literal face or the surface of something, as in the face of the earth. It makes its way into English via the Anglo-Norman face.

One of the first uses in English is from a life of St. Thomas Becket that appears in the South-English Legendary, a collection of hagiographies or saints’ lives. Here is the version from the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 108, which was copied c.1300:

Þat face was ȝwyȝt and cler i-nouȝ: and no blod nas þar-inne,
bote fram þe riȝt half of is frount: toward þe left chinne
A small rewe þere was of blode: þat ouer is nose drouȝ;
More blod þar nas in al is face: ase folk i-saiȝ i-nouȝ.

(That face was white and very clear; and no blood was therein,
but from the right half of his front, toward the left chin
There was a small row of blood that drew over his nose;
There was no blood in all of his face, as folk often tell.)

The use of face to mean the surface of something, which had existed in both Latin and Anglo-Norman, isn’t recorded in English until a bit later. From a Wycliffite Bible found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 369, copied sometime before 1382. Here is Isaiah 14:21:

Greithe ȝe his sones to slaȝter, for the wickidnesse of ther fadres; thei shul not togidere rise, ne eritagen the erthe, ne fulfille the face of the roundness of the cite.

(Prepare his sons for slaughter because of the wickedness of their fathers; they shall not rise together, nor inherit the earth, nor fill the face of the earth with the city.)

The corresponding phrase in the Vulgate is neque implebunt faciem orbis civitatum.

The sense of outward appearance or pretense, as in to put on a good face appears in the same manuscript. Here is 2 Corinthians 5:12:

We comenden not vs silf eftsoone to ȝou, but we ȝyuen to ȝou occacioun for to glorie for vs, that ȝe haue to hem that glorien in the face, and not in the herte.

(We commend not ourselves again to you, but we give to you occasion to glory on our behalf, that you have [understanding] of them that glory in the face, and not in the heart.)

The sense of face as reputation or social standing is a much later development, imported from China in the nineteenth century. It’s a calque of two Chinese words, liǎn (face, moral character) and miànzi (face, social prestige). Here is an early use of the phrase found in The Chinese Repository, a collection of English-language documents published in China, from December 1834:

The contrast which is drawn in this paper between the members of the present co-hong and the shameless merchants of former times is a curious specimen of Chinese rhetoric, and shows how much it behooves the present fraternity to have “a tender regard for their face,” lest they should lose their present high reputation for propriety and respectability.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2008, s.v. face.

“Art. VII. Journal of Occurences: Proclamation Against the Hong Merchants Conniving at and Abetting Vice in Foreigners; Imperial Edict Against Extortions of Hong Merchants,” (December 1834). The Chinese Repository, vol. 3 of 20. Canton: Printed for the Proprietors, 1834, 391. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. facies. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments: With the Apocryphal Books in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, vols. 3 and 4 of 4. Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1850, 3:425, 4:381. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Horstmann, Carl. “St. Thomas of Caunterbury.” The Early South-English Legendary. Early English Text Society (EETS). London: N. Trübner, 1887. lines, 2175–78, 169. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. face n.

Oxford English Dictionary, September 2009, s.v. face, n.

evolution

18 September 2020

Charles Darwin will forever be associated with the theory of evolution, but he was not the first to use the word evolution to describe the development of species, nor did he use that word when he first published his ideas on natural selection.

Evolution comes from the Latin evolutio, which meant the unrolling of a scroll. Cicero uses it in his De finibus bonorum et malorum (Regarding the Limits of Good and Evil):

Quid tibi, Torquate, quid huic Triario litterae, quid historiae cognitioque rerum, quid poetarum evolutio, quid tanta tot versuum memoria voluptatis affert?

(What pleasure do you Torquatus, or does Triarius here, receive from literature, from history and learning, from the unscrolling of the poets, from memorizing so many verses?)

There are a number of senses of evolution in English, starting in the early seventeenth century. Most of them relate to a twisting or unfolding motion or to an orderly progression of change, but I’m going to focus on the biological senses.

The first sense of evolution in biology refers to the growth and development of an animal or plant, from egg or seed to mature form. This sense is in place by 1670, when it appears in a review of the book Historiæ generalis insectorum by Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

First, It lays down the Ground of all Natural Changes in Insects; declaring, that by the word Change, is nothing else to be understood but a gradual and natural Evolution and Growth of the parts; not any Metamorphosis or Transformation of them: which Growth is here made to resemble, not only the Increase of other Animals, but also the Budding, Knitting and Spreading of Plants.

Use of evolution to mean the develop of and changes in species also predates Darwin. That sense appears in Charles Lyell’s 1832 Principles of Geology:

Of the truth of the last-mentioned geological theory, Lamarck seems to have been fully persuaded; and he also shews that he was deeply impressed with a belief prevalent amongst the older naturalists, that the primeval ocean invested the whole planet long after it became the habitation of living beings, and thus he was inclined to assert the priority of the types of marine animals to those of the terrestrial, and to fancy for example, that the testacea of the ocean existed first, until some of them, by gradual evolution, were improved into those inhabiting the land.

Darwin didn’t invent the theory of evolution—as with so many scientific breakthroughs, he built upon ideas that were circulating at the time. His key contribution was in describing the mechanism of natural selection. And he didn’t use the word evolution in the first, 1859, edition of his Origin of Species, probably because of the older sense referring to growth and development of an organism. But he did use the word in the sixth, 1873, edition of his book:

At the present day almost all naturalists admit evolution under some form.

And:

Every one who believes in slow and gradual evolution, will of course admit that specific changes may have been as abrupt and as great as any single variation which we meet with under nature, or even under domestication.

Just as Darwin didn’t invent the theory of evolution, he wasn’t the coiner of that phrase. That honor goes to Herbert Spencer, who used it in 1858, the year before Darwin published his version of the theory:

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none. [...] We may safely estimate the number of species that have existed, and are existing, on the Earth, at not less than ten millions. Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that by continual modifications, due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still.

Spencer is also credited with coining the phrase survival of the fittest and was one of the originators of Social Darwinism, the now discredited idea that extends the biological idea into society and ethics.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum. H. Rackham, trans. London: W. Heinemann, 1921, 1.7, 26. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species, sixth edition. London: John Murray, 1873, 201. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lyell, Charles. Principles of Geology, vol 2 of 3. London: J. Murray, 1832, 11. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. evolution, n.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 5. London: John Martin, 1670, 2078. Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Spencer, Herbert. “The Development Hypothesis.” Essays—Scientific, Political, and Speculative. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858, 389–90. HathiTrust Digital Archive.