quiet part (out) loud

Meme of the Simpsons character Krusty the Klown saying, “Oops! I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud.” From a 5 March 1995 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons.

8 July 2022

Since it began airing in 1989, the television show The Simpsons has had a huge impact on global, and especially American, culture. The show has contributed a number of words and phrases to the lexicon, one of them being saying the quiet part loud (often out loud). The phrase is deployed when someone accidentally utters their actual motivation for doing something as opposed to the approved or politic pretext for doing so.

A good example is this exchange between to commentators on the cable news show CNN Newsroom on 31 January 2019:

Poppy Harlow: But why is Mitch McConnell so opposed to something that would on the surface—this part of it, you know, make it possible for more Americans to vote?

Sabrina Siddiqui: Well, many people saw this as Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell saying the quiet part out loud. You have several states across the country where there have been Republican-backed efforts to restrict voting rights.

Video clip of the Simpsons character Krusty the Klown saying, “Oops! I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud.” From a 5 March 1995 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons.

But the phrase originated on the Simpsons, in the season six episode “A Star is Burns,” which first aired on 5 March 1995. In the episode, the character Krusty the Klown, voiced by actor Dan Castellaneta, is on a film festival jury and when asked why he voted for a film directed by the evil, local nuclear power plant owner Mr. Burns replies:

Let’s just say it moved me…to a bigger house! Oops! I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud.

Fans of the show picked up the phrase. The earliest record I have seen of someone using it is in a 16 September 1997 post to the Usenet newsgroup alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants:

> Reinsdorf: "Forty seven hockey fans in Canada say they like the radical
> realignment plan better than any other. We must listen to them, for the
> good of the game!"

“... about which I give nary a shit. Oops! I did it again: I said the loud part quiet, and the quiet part loud. Damn!”

28 October 2008 tweet that reads, “said the quiet part loud again, at least i'm wearing pants this time”

The phrase appears in several hundred Usenet posts during the ensuing decade, many of them directly referencing the Simpsons episode. And the Wisconsin State Journal of 22 July 2007 includes Krusty’s line in a listicle of favorite Simpson quotes. With the demise of Usenet (it still exists, but is a vestige of its former glory), use of the phrase started to appear on Twitter in 2008. A tweet from 28 October 2008 says the following (this Twitter account seems to consist mainly of random and uncontextualized comments, so exactly what the phrase here is referring to is inscrutable):

said the quiet part loud again, at least i'm wearing pants this time

17 November 2008 tweet that reads, “Dougie honey, I think you just said the quiet part loud :-)”

And less than a month later, on 17 November 2008, a Twitter user replied to a comment with the following:

Dougie honey, I think you just said the quiet part loud :-)

But the earliest use in print outside of the context of the Simpsons that I have found is in relation to Manitoba politics. The Winnipeg Sun includes this line in its 7 March 2010 issue relating to the then provincial Conservative party leader Hugh McFadyen:

McFadyen, by the way, raised eyebrows when he conceded defeat in the Concordia byelection several hours before the polls closed last Tuesday. Uh, pretty sure you said the quiet part loud again, Hugh.

But it was Trump’s election and presidency that opened the floodgates for the phrase to be used. Starting in 2016, the phrase became a regular commentary on politicians, usually but not exclusively Republican, accidentally speaking the truth (cf. gaffe). MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes began using the phrase that year. For example, there is this from his show All In with Chris Hayes from 20 September 2016:

(Video clip) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up. And now we have photo ID. And I think photo ID is going to will make a little bit of a difference as well. (End video clip)

HAYES: He said the quiet part loud. That was a Republican congressman from Wisconsin basically admitting the state's new voter ID law was intentionally put in place to get Republicans elected.

And there is this from the Washington Examiner on 13 October 2017:

"Reminder that the main difference between Trump and other Republicans is that he says the quiet part loud," said columnist Scott Tobias.

Over time, the wording saying the quiet part out loud became the most common form.

And with that, the phrase became a staple of the lexicon. It started out as a trickle of mostly ephemeral uses by Simpsons fans, but with the coming to power of a radical wing of the Republican party that didn’t feel the need to be coy about their motivations, the phrase was catapulted into common use. 

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Sources:

@icicle. Twitter, 28 October 2008.

@NilsMenten. Twitter, 17 November 2008.

Adams, Becket. “Another Day, Another Trashy, Misleading News Headline.” Washington Examiner (Washington, DC), 13 October 2017. ProQuest.

CNN Newsroom, CNN, 31 January 2019. Corpus of Contemporary American English.

Engstrom, Kevin. “Disastrous Interpretation.” Winnipeg Sun, 7 March 2010, 8. ProQuest.

Hayes, Chris. All In with Christ Hayes. MSNBC, 30 September 2016. CQ Roll Call (transcript). ProQuest.

Pearlman, Gregg. “CCT (N.Hayes): Magowan vows to fight...” Usenet: alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants, 16 September 1997.

“The Quiet Part Loud.” Know Your Meme, 2021.

Rogers, Nicole E. “Talk the Talk, If You’re a Fan of ‘The Simpsons.” Wisconsin State Journal, 22 July 2007, G10. ProQuest.

“A Star is Burns.” The Simpsons, aired 5 March 1995. Susie Dietter, dir. James L. Brooks, Sam Simon, and Ken Keeler, writers. Gracie Films and 20th Television.

trip the light fantastic

“Mirth” by William Blake. Watercolor illustration created between 1816–20 to illustrate Milton’s poem L’Allegro. The drawing shows the nymph Mirth surrounded by personifications of Laughter, Jest, Youthful Jollity, and Wreathed Smiles, among others.

7 July 2022

To trip the light fantastic is to dance. This rather strange idiom is an alteration of lines from two poems by John Milton. One of these lines is in his masque Comus, first performed in 1634:

Com, knit hands, and beat the ground,
In a light fantastick round.

(A masque is a style of courtly drama popular in the Early Modern period.)

And Milton associates the light fantastic with the verb to trip in his 1645 poem L’Allegro, when he calls upon Mirth to drive away Melancholy:

Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrincled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Com, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty.

Milton apparently intended both light and fantastick to be independent of one another; the dancing toe is light, and it is fantastick. But it was read by many to be a single phrase. The adjectival phrase light fantastic, associated with dancing, appears frequently starting in the 1730s and becoming something of a cliché in the process. We see an abridged form of Milton’s line in a 1731 poem by a William Ward:

See the Belle flutter with the sprightly Beau!
They trip it on the light, fantastic Toe:
Nor Words, nor Sighs, their am’rous Thoughts impart;
They dance, and glitter at each other’s Heart!

Light fantastic most often, but not always, is found modifying toe. For instance, there is this exception from a 1730 translation of François Bruys’s The Art of Knowing Women:

With Roses crown’d, on Flow’rs supinely laid,
ANACREON next the sprightly Lyre essay’d,
In light fantastic Measures beat the Ground,
Or dealt the Mirth-inspiring Juice around.

Presumably, the idiom did not exist in Bruys’s original French.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the phrase had become so overused that it no longer needed a noun to modify. And by 1809 light fantastic appears as a compound noun meaning dance, as we see in this 9 February 1809 notice in London’s Morning Post:

ELLISTON is engaged for Cheltenham by WATSON: and also the Misses ADAMS, “to trip it on the light fantastic.”

One last citation. Walter Scott uses the phrase in his 1824 novel St. Ronan’s Well and includes an editorial note alongside it:

The music greatly aided them in this last purpose, and it was not long ere a dozen of couples and upwards, were “tripping it on the light fantastic toe,” (I love a phrase that is not hackneyed) to the tune of Monymusk.

One assumes that Scott’s tongue was firmly planted in cheek when he put the parenthetical comment into the mouth of his narrator.

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Sources:

Bruys, François. The Art of Knowing Women: or, the Female Sex Dissected. London: 1730, 87. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

“Fashionable World.” Morning Post (London), 9 February 1809, 3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Milton, John. Poems of Mr. John Milton. London: Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Moseley, 1645, 31–32, 81. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2021, s.v. light fantastic, n.

Scott, Walter. St. Ronan’s Well, vol. 2 of 3. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1824, 191–92.

Ward, William. “To the Reverend Mr. Mabell” (1731). In Mary Barber, Poems on Several Occasions. London: C. Rivington, 1735, 207. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: William Blake, between 1816–20. Morgan Library. Public domain image.

trench foot / trench mouth

Wounded soldiers being tended to in a WWI trench. A wounded soldier lying on a stretcher is given a drink by a medic, while another wounded soldier looks on. Several other soldiers are standing about in the trench.

4 July 2022

Unsurprisingly, the names of these two afflictions come out of World War I, which was characterized on the western front by trench warfare. While the names date to the war, the afflictions themselves were known to medicine long before then.

Trench foot, also commonly known today as immersion foot, occurs when the feet remain wet over a long period. It was first described during another war, when Dr. Dominique Jean Larrey, a French army surgeon, described the condition that was occurring among Napoleon’s soldiers during their retreat from Moscow in 1812. The condition frequently occurs among soldiers, although it is by no means limited to them; anyone in cold, wet conditions for an extended period without dry footwear can suffer from it.

The earliest appearance of trench foot in print that I’m aware of is from the British medical journal The Lancet of 30 January 1915:

The so-called cases of trench pain or trench feet usually have no tissue destruction, no blebs, and not even any discolouration of the skin; they would appear to be due to acute neuritis of the feet excited by cold and exposure.

The use of “so-called” here indicates that the term was already in use by British soldiers, and perhaps the term can be antedated by a few months in diaries and letters.

While it has a similar name, trench mouth has a very different medical etiology. Acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis is caused by a bacterial infection. It’s easily prevented through proper oral care, but as that is often not available on the battlefield, it was associated with soldiers. It’s painful but not serious if treated, and it can be easily treated today with professional dental cleaning and antibiotics.

The name trench mouth is first recorded in the United States prior to that country’s entry into the war. Descriptions of the disease afflicting troops in Europe appear in an article syndicated by the United Press Service on 9 July 1916. Here is an extract from the version that appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette-Telegraph (The Oxford English Dictionary cites the same UP report but from a different paper):

The first symptom is the growth of a white lining in the mouth and throat. This resembles diphtheria. The inside of the mouth becomes painfully sensitive and at the climax of the attack the entire mouth is padded with cotton. After the climax, recovery is rapid.

“Trench mouth” is the popular name of the ailment but the British Tommies call it “foot and mouth disease,” or sometimes, “lump jaw.”

But again, the disease itself had been characterized earlier by a French doctor, Jean Hyacinthe Vincent (1862–1950), and alternative names for the disease use his name. Vincent’s angina and angina of Vincent are recorded in the Lancet of 3 May 1902:

Dr. STCLAIR [sic] THOMSON exhibited a case of Chancriform Ulcer of the Tonsil or “Vincent’s Angina.” The patient, a boy, aged 12 years, had only been complaining of a little sore-throat for four days. The right tonsil was seen to be occupied by an oblong greyish slough made up of a pulpy or chalky membrane which was easily detached. The case was shown as illustrating an uncommon form of membranous ulceration of the tonsil which had been described on the continent under various names, such as “diphtheroid angina,” “membranous amygdalitis,” and “ulcerating lacunar tonsillitis.” The name “angina of Vincent” was given to it in consequence of the discovery by Vincent in the membrane of a spindle-shaped bacillus of 4 μ in length and 1 μ in width. He had previously discovered the same bacillus in the dirt of hospitals.

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Sources:

Bush, Jeffrey S., Trevor Lofgren, and Simon Watson. “Trench Foot.” National Library of Medicine, 15 May 2022.

“Clinical Society of London.” The Lancet, 159.4105, 3 May 1902, 1251. Elsevier: ScienceDirect Journals Complete.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2014, s.v. trench, n.

“Strange Disease Attacks Soldiers.” Kalamazoo Gazette-Telegraph (Michigan), 8 July 1916, 4. America’s Historical Newspapers.

Turrell, W.J. “Electrotherapy at a Base Hospital.” The Lancet, 185.4770, 30 January 1915, 230. Elsevier: ScienceDirect Journals Complete.

Photo credit: unknown photographer, 1914–18. Public domain image. Wellcome Collection.

trailer

Screenshot from the trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 North by Northwest. The words “Every Staggering Sight and Sound is REAL” are emblazoned over the image of a burning tanker truck with a man (Cary Grant, or his stunt double) lying on the ground in front of it.

1 July 2022

A video advertisement for a movie is known as a trailer. While trailers are often watched on the internet nowadays, perhaps the most common place for prospective audiences to see them is in theaters prior to the start of another movie. But if they are shown before the feature film, why are they called trailers?

The name comes from the fact that originally such advertisements were attached at the end of the final reel of a movie by the distribution company and shipped out to theaters. The feature film often came packaged with other material: a short film, often animated; newsreels; and trailers. Until the 1970s movies were usually shown continuously in theaters, from matinee to the final showing of the day. People would often be seated in the theater before the previous showing of the feature had finished and would then watch the entire package, often through multiple showings at the price of one ticket; where the trailer appeared in the sequence didn’t really matter. But when management began the practice of clearing the theater after each showing, the advertisements were moved to the beginning to ensure they were seen by more people.

This review of an Italian serial starring Bartolomeo Pagano, a.k.a. “Maciste,” which appeared in North Carolina’s Charlotte Observer on 2 May 1919, shows the position trailers took in the packaged sequence of films:

It bristles with action, satisfies with its thrills, stunts and startling situations, supplies many a laugh when bes[t] needed; there is romance and mystery aplenty and “Maciste” is at his best from main title to trailer.

(Language was less of a barrier to international film distribution in the silent era. Hence, European films were widely shown in America in the early days of film.)

Originally, trailers did not necessarily advertise other movies. They were often other types of advertisements or public-service announcements. The earliest printed use of trailer that I have found is in Portland’s Oregonian of 20 February 1916 in reference to an ad placed by the production company decrying government efforts to censor films:

“Free speech, free press and a free stage always have been ideals of the American people,” reads a trailer attached to all Balboa films. “Then why not a free screen? Our Constitution’s most sacred guarantee is freedom of expression. When censorship or any form of it is legalized here, then will begin the end of our democracy.” This statement is intended to present the whole censorship controversy to motion picture spectators in its true light. If it is established, the spectators will suffer more than the producers. Hence, the associated picture makers have decided to put the issue up squarely to the people in this manner. It is for them to say if they want their amusements censored or not.

And a few months later, this little poem was printed in a number of newspapers. This particular instance is from Omaha’s World-Herald of 7 May 1916:

Our Movie Mother Goose.

Sing a song of Filmland,
   A close-up and a trailer.
For and twenty extra men
   Chase the “goil” and nail her!
The hero in a sport shirt
   Counts his weekly money,
While half a dozen roustabouts
   Endeavor to be funny!

A trailer could also be a notice that a government board of censors had approved the film. (I’ve never seen one on an American film, but one often sees such notices on older British films.) But the effectiveness of such notices was questionable, as this piece from the 24 January 1917 Kansas City Times indicates:

“The trailer on the end of a film, showing it has been passed by some board of censorship, means nothing,” McClure said. “Operators think it is a good joke on the public to take the trailer from an authorized film and tack it on to one that is obscene. We have complaints of this practice continually,” He is opposed to the “trailer” for this reason.

During WWI, trailers were used as military recruiting ads, as this mention in the 31 March 1917 Oregonian shows:

It was further voted to ask all the manufacturing companies to attach a trailer to one or all of the films which are issued during that week, reading substantially like this:

“Your country needs you now!

“The United States Naval Reserve force is in need of men from all trades and professions to enroll at once to guard our coasts. Service for war time only.”

An early reference to a trailer advertising another film is from Pennsylvania’s Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader of 2 November 1922 for a film that was shot locally:

Moving pictures of the city’s various departments were taken by J. T. Jennings today. The scenes are to be used as a “trailer” for advertising the movie, “In the Name of the Law.” The film taken locally embraces the detective, police and councilmanic departments, the chief of police, mayor, chiefs of police convention and the police court reporters. The “trailer” is to be shown at Poll’s Theatre on Monday.

And two weeks later, there is this in the 14 November 1922 Oregonian:

It is remarkable to hear an advertisement receive applause. But such is the case at the Liberty theater, where a “trailer” advertising the coming attraction, “Brawn of the North” is being shown. Strongheart, the dog, is the central figure in this film, and the moment he puts his nose in the picture is a signal for enthusiastic approval from the audience.

In all likelihood, trailers advertising other films were well established by 1922, but these two are the earliest instances of the term being used in this specific sense that I have found to date.

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Sources:

“At Showhouses.” Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), 2 May 1919, 17. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Breezy Gossip of the Photoplay Favorites.” World-Herald (Omaha, Nebraska), 7 May 1916, 44. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“City Officials Take Part in ‘Movies.’” Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader (Pennsylvania), 2 November 1922, 23. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Close in on ‘Wildcat’ Films.” Kansas City Times (Missouri), 24 January 1917, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. [The metadata for this paper and issue is suspect. The banner at the top of the page is illegible in the digital scan. From other articles on the page, it is clear the date is indeed 24 January 1917, but the page number and whether this is the daily Kansas City Times or the weekly Kansas City Star of the same date is unclear. The pages of the two papers are intermingled in the database.]

“Moving Picture News.” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 31 March 1917, 9. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Moving Picture News.” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 14 November 1922, 16. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. trailer, n.

“Screen Gossip.” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 20 February 1916, 7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 1959. Public domain image as the copyright to the film’s trailer was not renewed.

stare decisis

Oblique view of the front facade of the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. A portico lined with marble columns with the words “Equal Justice Under Law” inscribed above them. A statue of a seated lawgiver holding a tablet is in the foreground.

29 June 2022

Stare decisis is the Latin name of a legal principle that is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary as follows:

stare decisis (stahr-ee di-sI-sis or stair-ee) n. (Latin “to stand by things decided”) (18c) The doctrine of precedent, under which a court must follow earlier judicial decisions when the same points arise again in litigation.

Stare decisis is essential to the rule of law. Without the stability of a consistent application, the law is determined by the whims of individual jurists, and individuals cannot rely upon it. In the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor laid out the three considerations for determining whether stare decisis should be cast aside and a prior decision overturned: Has the old rule become impractical? Do people rely on the old rule in such a way that overturning it would lead to more harm than good? And is the old rule still even relevant? O’Connor wrote:

Even when the decision to overrule a prior case is not, as in the rare, latter instance, virtually foreordained, it is common wisdom that the rule of stare decisis is not an “inexorable command,” and certainly it is not such in every constitutional case [….] Rather, when this Court reexamines a prior holding, its judgment is customarily informed by a series of prudential and pragmatic considerations designed to test the consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal of the rule of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and overruling a prior case. Thus, for example, we may ask whether the rule has proven to be intolerable simply in defying practical workability […]; whether the rule is subject to a kind of reliance that would lend a special hardship to the consequences of overruling and add inequity to the cost of repudiation […]; whether related principles of law have so far developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine […]; or whether facts have so changed, or come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant application or justification.

(For ease of reading, I have omitted O’Connor’s citations to prior cases here.)

According to O’Connor’s test, even if a judge believes a prior decision to have been wrongly decided they should not necessarily overturn it. For instance, if a judge believed that the US Supreme Court decision permitting same-sex marriage (i.e., Obergefell v. Hodges) was wrongly decided, allowing same-sex marriage is still practical and relevant, and the harm caused to the hundreds of thousands who have relied upon the decision and gotten married would outweigh the de minimis harm in keeping the decision in place.

Stare decisis is not an idiom found in classical Latin, having been invented in the seventeenth century—not the eighteenth as Black’s incorrectly indicates. It appears in the record of a legal case decided by a British court in 1673:

It being moved again this Term, Hale consented that it should be reversed according as the latter Presidents have been; for he said it was his Rule Stare decisis.

It is used as a verb in another case, this one from 1735. While in Latin stare decisis is grammatically a verb phrase, in English usage it is almost always a noun phrase. This is an exception to the usual trend:

Whatever therefore my first thoughts were, and how much soever the law of executors wants alteration; we think, that as to the two bonds which were forfeited, the defendant must have an allowance for the penalties: and we must stare decisis.

And it is occasionally applied to contexts other than legal litigation. In this one, it is used in the context of politics. From an account of the debate in the Irish House of Commons from 1800:

From the first moment of the French war, the horror of innovation has been the Minister’s first principle. Stare decisis and non quieta movere has been the cant of the cabinet. This sentiment has been able to resist every improvement, however necessary, and to push every abuse, however odious. This sentiment has justified Mr. Pitt in suspending, if not deserting, his early politics of Parliamentary Reform.

Casting aside stare decisis without due consideration is a marker of an activist judge who is taking on the role of a politician and legislator, rather than that of a jurist.

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Sources:

Black’s Law Dictionary, eleventh edition, 2019. Bryan A. Garner, ed. Thomson Reuters Westlaw, s.v. stare decisis.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2016, s.v. stare decisis, phr.

“Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA. v. Casey.” Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court at October Term, 1991. United States Reports, vol. 505. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1996, 854–855.  

A Report of the Debate in the House of Commons of Ireland on Wednesday and Thursday the 15th and 16th of January, 1800. Dublin: James Moore, 1800, 61. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Strange, John. Reports of Adjudged Cases, vol. 2. London: Henry Lintot for William Sandby, 1755, 1035. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Ventris, Peyton. Reports. London: Richard and Edward Atkyns for Charles Harper, 1696, 243. Early English Books Online.

Photo credit: Daderot, 2008. Public domain image.