patient zero

Mary Mallon, a.k.a. “Typhoid Mary,” an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, who as quarantined by New York health authorities in 1907–10 and 1915–38 to prevent the spread of the disease

18 June 2025

The term patient zero is an epidemiological term for the person who transmits an infection into a population that had been free of it. The term arose during the initial stages of the AIDS pandemic as a misinterpretation of the label Patient O—a capital letter O, not a zero—in data collected by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The letter O stood for “outside of California,” since the study initially focused on patients in Los Angeles.

In the CDC’s March 1984 published study, the O was converted to a 0 (zero), and the other patients were labeled by letters and a number indicated their place of residence and sequence of diagnosis (e.g., Patient LA 9 was ninth person in the cluster from Los Angeles to be diagnosed; NY 9 was the ninth from New York to be diagnosed):

AIDS developed in four men in southern California after they had sexual contact with a non-Californian, Patient 0. […] Because Patient 0 appeared to link AIDS patients from southern California and New York City, we extended our investigation beyond the Los Angeles-Orange County metropolitan area.

Diagram of the March 1984 CDC AIDS cluster study with patient “0” at the center

This shift had the unfortunate result of making it seem as if Patient 0 was the source of the disease in this cluster, because zero precedes one and because of an association with the nuclear targeting term ground zero. But Patient 0 was not the first person in North America to contract the disease, and in fact he was probably not even the first in that cluster to contract the disease—in fact, he himself may have contracted the disease from one of the eight men in the cluster with whom he had had sex. He was simply the person through whom all forty men in the cluster were linked, although he had had sexual contact with only eight of them.

The earliest use of patient zero (spelled out) that I have been able to find is in the 1 May 1984 issue of The Advocate:

NOTES ABOUT PATIENT ZERO

The headlines ran something like “40 AIDS Cases Linked to 1 Carrier” (USA Today) on March 27, when word of a CDC team’s paper about a cluster of cases got out. The CDC paper in the March issue of the American Journal of Medicine, describes sexual contacts that had been investigated among 40 gay men, tracing all to contact they had at some point with a man identified as “Patient 0,” who had, allegedly, infected his partners in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas.

The Advocate’s article errs in describing the geographical range of Patient 0’s sexual contacts. He had had sex with only eight men in the study, four from New York City and four from Los Angeles. The others in the study had sexual contact with either those eight or others in the study.

But the widespread use of patient zero came about following the publication of Randy Shilts’s 1987 And the Band Played On, a book about the early years of the AIDS pandemic. Shilts identified a French-Canadian flight attendant by the name of Gaëtan Dugas as patient zero:

By the time Bill Darrow’s research was done, he had established sexual links between 40 patients in ten cities. At the center of the cluster diagram was Gaetan Dugas, marked on the chart as Patient Zero of the GRID epidemic. His role was truly remarkable. At least 40 of the first 248 gay men diagnosed with GRID in the United States, as of April 12, 1982, either had sex with Gaetan Dugas or had had sex with someone who had.

In addition to continuing the misidentification of the letter O with the number 0, Shilts unfairly smeared Dugas with the inference that he was the vector for the disease’s entry into and spread in North America, something of a 1980s version of Typhoid Mary. And from Shilts’s description of Dugas, readers came away with the impression that he was something of a monster. According to this image, not only was he extraordinarily promiscuous, but he also carelessly, or even deliberately, infected others after he knew he had the disease. There is no evidence to support either of these ideas. The number of Dugas’s sexual partners was similar to that of others in the cluster, and he was quite cooperative with the CDC investigators, even flying to Atlanta to assist in the epidemiological study. And since at the time no one knew that the disease that would become known as AIDS was sexually transmitted, one can hardly blame Dugas for infecting others. Ironically, it was Dugas’s cooperative attitude and ability to recall the names of his many sexual partners that both made him especially valuable to the investigators and led to the impression that he was a particularly effective vector of the disease. Dugas died of AIDS in March 1984, shortly after the CDC study was published.

So if Dugas was not the source of the disease, where did it come from? A study published in Nature in November 2016 of genetic evidence of HIV strains shows that the disease migrated from Africa to Haiti in the 1960s, and from Haiti to New York City by the early 1970s. Trying to pinpoint the exact source of the disease is valuable from an epidemiological standpoint, but dwelling on it in the press and identifying the individual is ethically questionable, running the risk of placing the blame on a person rather than the virus, as was done with Dugas.

By 1990, the term patient zero was being applied outside the context of AIDS. An 8 January 1990 article in the Arizona Republic made jocular use of the term in the context of a computer virus:

“I feel like I’ve got VD,” he said of his VDT [i.e., video display terminal] disease. “Today, I’ve been on the phone calling all my contacts.”

I started to feel sorry for the guy. He should have used protection—they have programs for that.

He had been the innocent victim of a malicious person who deliberately infected his system. Somewhere, some demented nerd was Patient Zero in this rapidly spreading epidemic.

Note this particular use alludes to the myth of Dugas deliberately spreading AIDS.

A few months later, on 18 March 1990, Florida’s Palm Beach Post used patient zero in the context of a local measles outbreak:

Health officials backtracked from a group of six victims at Lake Worth Christian School to establish that the girl who traveled to West Virginia was the “patient zero” of this year’s measles outbreak.

That’s how relabeling of the letter O as a zero and a misunderstanding of exactly what an epidemiological cluster study is led to the coining of patient zero.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Auerbach, David M., William W. Darrow, Harold W. Jaffe, and James W. Curran. “Cluster of Cases of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome: Patients Linked by Sexual Contact.” American Journal of Medicine, 76.3, March 1984, 487–92 at 489.

Ellicott, Val. “County Health Officials Track Elusive Trail of Measles Cases.” Palm Beach Post (Florida), 18 March 1990, B1/4. ProQuest Newspapers.

Fain, Nathan. “Health: Aftershocks from the Bay Area.” Advocate, 393, 1 May 1984, 14–15 at 15. ProQuest Magazine.

Kahn, Alice. “Sorrowful Tale of a Good Disk that Slipped.” Arizona Republic (Phoenix), 8 January 1990, B4/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2005, s.v. patient zero, n.

Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics People and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987, 147. Archive.org.

Worobey, Michael, et al. “1970s and ‘Patient 0’ HIV-1 Genomes Illuminate Early HIV/AIDS History in North America.” Nature, 539, 3 November 2016, 98–105 at 99–100.

Image credits:

Typhoid Mary: unknown photographer, 1907. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

CDC cluster: David Auerbach, et al., American Journal of Medicine, 76.3, March 1984, 487–92 at 489. Fair use of a single, low-resolution diagram from a published study to illustrate the topic under discussion.

cavalier

Prince Rupert, Count Palantine, a Royalist cavalry commander in the English Civil War, Anthony van Dyck, c. 1637, oil on canvas

16 June 2025

A cavalier is literally a mounted soldier, especially a gentleman. When the word is capitalized, it can refer to a supporter of King Charles I in the English Civil War. And it is an adjective meaning carefree, disdainful, or dismissive, presumably because that is an attitude evinced by such genteel cavalrymen.

The word is borrowed from multiple Romance languages. Early borrowings are from the Spanish cavallero and to a lesser degree from the Italian cavaliere and the Portuguese cavalliero. The modern English form is from the French cavalier. As with many such borrowings, the early uses in English are in a foreign context.

The earliest English use of the word I have found is in a pseudonym adopted by a 1589 pamphleteer. Pasquill “the Renowned Cavaliero” of England wrote several theological as part of the Marprelate Controversy, a pamphlet war between Puritans and defenders of the Anglican church. Pasquill took the Anglican side, and in his pamphlets debated a strawman named Marforio, who took the Puritan side. The two names were taken from the “talking statues of Rome,” Pasquino and Marforio. Pasquino is the name of a statue of Menelaus, of Iliad fame, that was unearthed in Rome in 1501 and subsequently was used as a sort of bulletin board for commentary and witticism. The statue known as Marforio often hosted pamphlets made in response to those appearing on Pasquino. The 1589 pamphlet The Returne of the Renowned Caualiero Pasquill uses as a conceit the idea that the two statues, having come to England, engage in the theological debate. The Pasquill pamphlets have been attributed to playwright and poet Thomas Nashe by some, but this attribution is doubtful.

Pasquino, the talking statue of Rome

Another early use, this time in a Spanish context, is in Edward Daunce’s 1590 A Briefe Discourse of the Spanish State:

Their chiualrie in their thieuish surprising the higher Nauarre (which they hold by force of the Popes proscription) is of like condition: whereby it may appeare that notwithstanding these Caualeros haue their Rapiers hanging point blancke, that it is their penurie at home, that giues them stomake, according to their name that they are Sagaces Hispani, to winde, or smell their neighbors cupbords abrode.

But within a decade we see cavalier used in an English context. Thomas Heywood’s 1600 play, The First and Second Partes of King Edward the Fourth. In this passage the noble Falconbridge and the common soldiers Spicing and Chub discuss who is worthy to be a knight:

Fal[conbridge]. Why this is fine, go to, knight whom thou wilt:

Spi[cing]. Who, I knight any of them? Ile sée them hangde first for a companie of tattred ragged rascailes, if I were a king, I would not knight one of them?

Chub. What not mee Caualero Chub?

The association of Cavalier with supporters of Charles I dates to 1641 when it appears in a subtitle of a pamphlet calling for the raising of a militia to defend parliament:

A True Relation of the Unparaleld Breach of Parliament, by his Maiesty as Is Conceivd the 4 of Ianuary, 1641 Being Instigated Therunto by Unadvised Counsels, under Pretence of a Legall Proceeding.

Together with a Relation of the Hostile Intention upon the House of Commons, by Captaine Hyde, and Those Other Cavaliers and Souldiers that Accompanied His Majesty in a War-like Manner, Armed with Swords, Pistols and Dragounes.

And the adjectival use, meaning careless or dismissive, appears in the decades following the Civil War. From Michael Hawke’s 1657 pamphlet Killing Is Murder, and No Murder is a response to another pamphlet, wherein it is the claimed “his calumnious scoffs are perstringed and cramb'd down his own throat”:

Besides many material passages are untouched by the other, which in this are punctually handled, and not by skippes, but litterally, and orderly decided: And also have retorted in his teeth the filth of his scurrilous and bitter taunts, and thrown them in his own face, which for the most part work more powerfully on cavalier and nimble wits then a Logical Argument.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Daunce, Edward. A Briefe Discourse of the Spanish State. London: Richard Field, 1590, 9. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Hawke, Michael. Killing Is Murder, and No Murder.  London: 1657, sig. A3v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Heywood, Thomas. The First and Second Partes of King Edward the Fourth. London: Felix Kingston for Humfrey Lownes and John Oxenbridge, 1600, sig. B4v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cavalier, n. and adj.

Pasquill of England. The Returne of the Renowned Caualiero Pasquill of England, from the Other Side the Seas, and His Meeting with Malforius at London. London: Pepper Allie (pseud. John Charlewood), 1589. ProQuest: Early English Books Online

A True Relation of the Unparaleld Breach of Parliament. London: 1641. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Image credits:

Prince Rupert, Count Palatine: Anthony van Dyck, c. 1637, oil on canvas. UK National Gallery. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

Pasquino, the talking statue of Rome: Lalupa, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work,

by hook or by crook

Image of Satan and demons holding hooks, 15th century, from the manuscript Oxford Bodleian Library, MS Douce 134, fol. 98r

13 June 2025

The phrase by hook or by crook means by any means, fair or foul. Its origin, however, is not known. Over the years it has accumulated a number of alleged etymologies, most of which can be readily dismissed as implausible, if not downright impossible. There is one, however, that seems more likely than the others. But before we start examining the different etymological possibilities, it would be a good idea to establish what the facts are and what evidence of the phrase’s early use is available.

The earliest known use of the words hook and crook in close proximity can be found in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86, in a text rubricated as Les Diz de Seint Bernard (The Sayings of Saint Bernard). The manuscript was compiled sometime between 1272 and 1282. The relevant passage describes humanity’s three foes: the flesh, the world, and the fiend—i.e., Satan. Of this last foe, it says:

He wolde hauen þin herte blod;
Þou be war of his hok!
Do nou also ich haue þe seid,
And alle þre sulen ben aleid
Wiþ here owene crok.

(He would have your heart’s blood;
You beware of his hook!
Do now as I have told you,
And all three should be vanquished
With their own crook.)

The connection to Satan is strengthened when we look at the words individually. Hook was used in the fifteenth century to refer to Satan’s claws, and demons were commonly depicted in medieval illustrations as carrying meat hooks for use in roasting bodies in hell. Crook was similarly used for Satan’s hook or clutches, as well as for tricks or deceptions by Satan and others since the end of the twelfth century, Satan being depicted as some sort of evil shepherd, leading his flock to perdition. A poetic homily on Matthew 2:20 in the Ormulum manuscript, copied c. 1200, has this line:

Þa wære he þurrh þe deofless croc I gluterrnesse fallenn.

(That it was through the devil’s crook I fell into gluttony.)

Of course, these individual uses and the hooks and crooks in The Sayings of Saint Bernard aren’t arranged in the phrase that’s familiar to us today. That would come about a hundred years later in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 296, a collection of Lollard tracts once ascribed to John Wyclif, but now known to be by a number of authors. The manuscript was compiled after 1383, but the individual texts were composed earlier.

The first tract in this manuscript to use the phrase is The Great Sentence of the Curse Expounded which denounces corrupt priests:

and þei sillen sacramentis, as ordris, and oþere spiritualte, as halwyng of auteris, of chirchis, and chircheȝerdis; and compellen men to bie alle þis wiþ hok or crok

(and they sell the blessed sacraments, [just] as [they do] orders, and other spirituality, as the hallowing of altars, of churches, and churchyards; and compel men to buy all these with hook or crook)

The second tract in the manuscript that uses the phrase is Why Poor Priests Have No Benefice:

& ȝif þei schullen haue ony heiȝe sacramentis or poyntis of þe heiȝe prelatis, comynly þei schulle bie hem wiþ pore mennus goodis wiþ hook or wiþ crok

(and if they should have any high sacraments or appointments from the high prelates, frequently they must buy them with poor men’s possessions with hook or with crook)

Both of these texts use the phrase in the context of buying ecclesiastical services and favors.

So we have both hooks and crooks associated with Satan and the earliest appearances of the phrase by hook or by crook used in the context of the corruption of the clergy. The available evidence indicates that the phrase is a reduplication that originally referenced the powers, strategies, and deceptions of the devil and those whom he corrupted. While we can’t say with absolute certainty that this is the origin, this explanation is reasonable and fits the available evidence rather well.

As for other explanations that have been proffered, none have strong (or any, really) evidence to support them.

One explanation that has been revived by etymologists Anatoly Liberman and Michael Quinion is that the phrase has its origins in the medieval right of firebote. Peasants were granted the right to collect dead wood from forests but were not allowed to cut down trees. They would use hooks and crooks to pull down dead branches. It’s a neat explanation that has been floating around since 1850, but the trouble is that the only evidence for the phrase being used in this forestry sense comes later. There is this from a fragment of a petition from the town of Bodwin to Henry VIII, written some time between 1529 and 1539:

Where the said inhabitants have used to have common pasture, with all manner of beasts, and common fuel, in a wood called Dynmure Wood, a mile from the said town, that is to say, with hook and crook to lop and crop and to carry away, upon their backs, and none other ways, the same Prior hath not only within this 15th year caused the said wood to be inclosed, and gates locked, so that the said Inhabitants have much labour and pain going to and from the said wood, to fetch their foresaid fuel, and thereby utterly excluded from their said common and pasture.

While this use of the phrase is noteworthy, it’s not conclusive. First, the appearance of the phrase here is some 150 years after the earliest known use of the phrase, and some 250 years after the use of hook and crook in The Sayings of St. Bernard. So it’s not good evidence of the origin of the phrase. Second, the phrase is used literally, with actual hooks and crooks, well after the metaphorical use had already been established. Third, this published version is clearly edited with modernized spelling. Without looking at the manuscript, it’s impossible to tell what interventions the nineteenth-century editors made, and the published version does not give any identifying information as to where this manuscript might be found. It’s intriguing but somewhat suspect until the original, or at least an accurate transcription, can be found.

Other explanations that have been offered are that it refers to two gentlemen with the names Hook and Crook. Who these gentlemen were varies with the telling, but in all cases they postdate the appearance the phrase. Another explanation is that it refers the English invasion of Ireland and is a reference to the location of the English army’s landing. But again, there are different versions. One places its origin with Cromwell’s 1649 invasion, again a postdating of the phrase’s appearance. Another is the twelfth century Norman invasion of Ireland. That one is chronologically feasible, but again there is no evidence connecting the phrase to the event.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“Fragment of Petition from the Town, to Henry VIII” (between 1529–39). The Bodmin Register, 19 September 1835, 306–07. Google Books.

Furnivall, F. J., The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS, part II, 1901, 761. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“The Grete Sentence of Curse Expounded.” 267–337 at 331. In Thomas Arnold, ed. Select English Works of John Wyclif, vol. 3 of 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871, 267–337 at 331. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 296.

Liberman, Anatoly, “By Hook or by Crook,” OUPblog, 25 May 2016.

Middle English Dictionary, 4 March 2025, s. v. hok, n. and crok, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s. v. hook, n.1 and by, prep & adv.

Quinion, Michael. “By Hook or by Crook,” World Wide Words, 7 June 2016.

“Secundum Matheum XX” (homily). In Robert Holt, ed. The Ormulum, vol 2 of 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878, 39–82 at 50. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 1.

“Why Poor Priests Have No Benefice.” In F. D. Matthew, ed. The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted. Early English Text Society O.S. 74. London: Trübner, 1880, 244–53 at 250. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 296.

curmudgeon

Screenshot from The Simpsons (2002)

9 June 2025

A curmudgeon is an ill-tempered person, usually used in reference to an old man. The origin of curmudgeon is not known for certain, although etymologist Anatoly Liberman provides a reasonable explanation. What we do know for certain is that the earliest known use of the word can be found in Richard Stanyhurst’s history of Ireland, which appears in the 1577 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles. (The OED cites the second, 1587, edition, but it also appears in the earlier one). The passage in question describes how, in 1537. Eleanor McCarthy accepted an offer of marriage to Manus O’Donnell, the curmudgeon in question, in order to guarantee the safety of her nephew, Conn O’Neill, but once his safety was guaranteed she did not go through with the marriage:

The Ladie Elenore hauing this, to hir contentation bestowed hir nephew, she expostulated verie sharpely with Odoneyle as touching hys villanie, protesting that the onely cause of hir match with him proceeded of an especiall care to haue hir nephew countenanced: and now that he was out of his lashe, that mynded to haue betrayed him, he should well vnderstande, that as the feare of his daunger mooued hir to annere to such a clownish Curmudgen, so the assuraunce of his safetie, should cause hir to sequester hirselfe from so butcherly a cuttbrote, that would be like a pelting mercenarie patche hyred, to sell or betray the innocent bloud of his nephew by affinitie, and hirs by consanguinitie. And in thys wise trussing vp bag and baggage, she forsooke Odoneyle, and returned to hir countrey.

Liberman suggests a Gaelic etymology, from muigean, “a churlish, disagreeable person,” plus car-, literally meaning “twist, bend” but when used as a prefix can have an intensifying effect, the Gaelic equivalent of the Latin dis-. Liberman’s etymology is not only linguistically plausible, but Stanyhurst was Irish and writing in an Irish context, so the Gaelic connection is a reasonable surmise.

Other suggested etymologies are more likely to be found on the internet but are not supported by evidence. One such is that it is a variation on cornmudgin. The Middle English muchen means to hoard. So a cornmudgin is someone who hoards grain. The problem with this explanation is the only known use of cornmudgin is from Philemon Holland’s 1600 translation of Livy’s Romane Historie, where the word appears twice. The first instance describes how, during a famine in 439 BCE, Spurius Melius, a wealthy grain merchant attempted to sell his grain at a low price in order to win the affection of the people and be crowned king:

Howbeit, the Claudij and Cassis, by reason of the Consulships and Decemvirships of their own, by reason of the honourable estate and reputation of their auncestors, & the worship and glory of their linage, tooke upon them, became hautie and proud, and aspired to that, wherunto Sp. Melius had no such meanes to induce him : who might have sit him downe, well enough, and rather wished and praied to God, than hoped once for so much, as a Tribuneship of the Commons. And supposed he, being but a rich corne-mudgin, that with a quart (or measure of come of two pounds) hee had bought the freedome of his fellow cittizens?

And the later appearance mentions fines for hoarding grain:

Also P. Claudius and Serv. Sulpitius Galbe, Ædiles Curule, hung up twelve brasen shields, made of the fines that certeine commudgins paid, for hourding up and keeping in their graine.

Since curmudgeon is older than this, it is more likely that Holland’s cornmudgin is a one-off pun, playing on curmudgeon, especially given Holland’s affinity for colloquial speech and how he “framed [his] pen, not to any affected phrase, but to a meane and popular stile.”

Another unsupported etymology is from Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary:

CURMU´DGEON. n.s. [It is a vitious manner of pronouncing coeur mechant, Fr. an unknown correspondent.]

Coeur mechant means bitter or evil heart in French. Johnson’s dictionary is a landmark lexicographic achievement, but he got a lot wrong, and his etymologies are often particularly suspect. This one that Johnson received from the unknown correspondent is one such case. It’s not a bad off-the-cuff guess, but it’s not supported by any evidence.

Johnson’s etymology has also given rise to one of the worst lexicographic howlers in history when in 1775 lexicographer John Ash misread Johnson’s entry and gave the etymology as:

CURMUDG´EON (s. from the French cœur, unknown, and mechant, a correspondent).

Other suggestions made over the centuries are that it comes from a supposed Old English word *ceorlmodigan (churlish minded); from the medieval Latin corimedis (one who is liable to pay tax); or somehow related to dog/cur in the manger. None of these are supported by any evidence.

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Sources:

Ash, John. The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1 of 2. London: Edward and Charles Dilly and R. Baldwin, 1775, s.v curmudgeon. Archive.org.

Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language. 1755, 1773, s.v. curmudgeon. Edited by Beth Rapp Young, Jack Lynch, William Dorner, Amy Larner Giroux, Carmen Faye Mathes, and Abigail Moreshead. 2021. Johnson’s Dictionary Online.  

Liberman, Anatoly, An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, University of Minnesota Press, 2008, s. v. mooch, 162–65.

Livy. The Romane Historie. Philemon Holland, trans. London: Adam Islip, 1600, 4:150, 38:1004, and sig. A.vi–vii. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

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

Stanyhurst, Richard. “The Thirde Book of the Historie of Ireland, Comprising the Raigne of Henry the Eyght.” In The Historie of Ireland, Raphaell Holinshed, ed. London: John Hunne, 1577, 102. Archive.org.

Image credit: “The Old Man and the Key,” Lance Kramer, director; John Vitti, writer; Matt Groening, creator. The Simpsons, 13.13, broadcast 10 March 2002. Fair use of a single frame to illustrate the topic under discussion.

agree to disagree

Statue of John Wesley in Melbourne, Australia by Paul Raphael Montford

9 June 2025

It is commonly claimed, especially in Methodist circles, that the phrase agree to disagree was coined by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. The claimants point to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), where indeed a 1775 letter by Wesley that uses the phrase is the first citation. (Although it is preceded in that dictionary entry by two uses of agree to differ, both in a theological context.) But this is a good example of how the OED, while it endeavors to include the first known use of a word or phrase, can often be antedated.

The Wesley quotation in the OED comes in 3 November 1775 letter:

No man is a good judge in his own cause. I believe I am tolerably impartial; but you are not (at least, was not some time since) with regard to King Charles I. Come and see what I say. If the worst comes, we can agree to disagree.

But this is not even the first use of the phrase by Wesley. He uses it in an 18 November 1770 funeral sermon for the Reverend George Whitefield:

In these [less essential doctrines] we many think and let think; we may “agree to disagree.” But mean time let us hold fast the essentials of the faith, which was once delivered to the saints; and which this champion of God so strongly insisted on, at all times, and in all places.

The use of quotation marks in the print edition (which may or may not have been indicated by a change in intonation in the oral delivery of the sermon) indicate that this was already a set phrase and was probably also a nod to an earlier use of the phrase by Whitefield twenty years earlier.

In a 29 June 1750 letter, Whitefield, a strong advocate for ecumenism, wrote:

If you and the rest of the preachers were to meet together more frequently, and tell each other your grievances, opinions, &c. it might be of service. This may be done in a very friendly way, and thereby many uneasinesses might be prevented. After all, those that will live in peace must agree to disagree in many things with their fellow-labourers, and not let little things part or disunite them.

Wesley and Whitefield frequently disagreed, yet Whitefield asked Wesley to preach his funeral sermon. So Wesley’s use of the phrase in that 1770 sermon was quite apt but hardly a coinage.

But Whitefield didn't coin it either.  The earliest use of the phrase that I can find is in another funeral sermon preached some 175 years earlier in 1601 by William Harrison, a clergyman who argued against the existence of purgatory:

It would require a longer discourse, then now I can stand vpon: to descend into each of these particulars, beeing limited with the time, mine owne weakenes, and your wearines; yet if any man doubt, let him demurre with mee vpon a further tryall, and conference, when I shall (if God will) satisfie him to the full; that in all these seuerall points, they doe nothing else but agree to disagree: in the meane time I dare auouch as first I did, that purgatorie is not at all.

And in a secular and poetic context, William Wycherley used it in a 1704 poem about the marriage of two “ill natur’d,”  Black enslaved persons who were to be emancipated upon their marriage:

In vain then, shou’d I give you Devil’s Joy,
Which both resolve, by Wedlock, to destroy,
Who, like Black Fiends, agree to disagree,
Each other’s Torment, out of Love to be,
More bound to be, with your selves, but more free.

While the poem is secular, unlike Harrison, the poet is arguing that this particular marriage will be a sort of purgatory.

Agree to disagree is a good example of how coinages credited to famous people are often incorrect. Celebrities get the credit because either their words are preserved while those of lesser mortals are forgotten, or simply because more people read them and they come to the attention of lexicographers (and in this case, preachers).

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Harrison, William. “The Soules Solace Against Sorrow” (1601). Deaths Aduantage Little Regarded, and The Soules Solace Against Sorrow. London: Felix Kyngston, 1602, 32–33. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2012, s.v. agree, v.

St. Clair, Stan. “Where Did That Come From?—Agree to Disagree.” Southern Standard, 8 March 2025.

Wesley, John. Letter, 3 November 1775. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 6 of 8. John Telford, ed. London: Epworth Press, 1931, 186. Archive.org.

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Photo credit: Adam Carr, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.