Recent news stories reports that the UN inspectors have been unable to find any 'smoking guns' in Iraq. Now, I'm confused - I thought a smoking gun is a term to describe signs (in this case) of a weapon that has already been let off, but I thought they were searching for signs of weapons of mass destruction being made and developed, not used?
Anyway, surely the first sign of the Iraqis using a weapon of that nature would be (heaven forbid) a large crater somewhere in Europe or America??
Is this just bad reporting/an over-eagerness by politicians and the press to trendy soundbytes and sensationalist reporting or are the UN team out to look for the wrong thing? (or have I just got the wrong end of the stick?!
)
Dear bonzaialsatian: "smoking gun" is a metaphor meaning important circumstantial evidence.
A classic defintion of circumstantial evidence was given by Ralph Waldo Emerson, when he
told about a trout being found in a pail of milk being evidence that the farmer had added brook
water to the milk.
Oh... so ANY evidence of the supposed weapons of mass destruction.
They seemed so darn dissapointed that nothing has been found so far - almost as if they (the US and UK governments) want (I know - not the best word to use) a war to go ahead, though I suppose this can lead to plenty of debate and speculation as well, not to mention the possibilities that Iraq really IS hiding WOMD, or the oil situation.
I think the smoking gun phrase has been extended to mean not circumstantial but definitive evidence.
This was a poor choice of words, considering what it was referring to. Yes, guns do smoke after being fired. And, as Faldage said, the meaning has been extended. As in, if you come into a room and find one person shot and another holding a smoking gun, you can assume that there is a very high likelihood that the person holding the gun was the shooter. After all, the smoke has not dissipated, so the gun has been fired within the preceding few seconds. It is unlikely that a third person would have been able to make a complete escape and be undetected in that amount of time.
If I may, however, I'd like to post a reminder that in the past, political opinions and comments on this board have led to some ugliness; and I hope that we can avoid that happening again. Thanks, everybody.
Actually, the metaphor is rather antiquated, in that nowadays guns emit hardly any smoke, and it
dissipates very rapidly.
The old nitrate test used to show that the hand of the shooter had chemical traces of the explosive
on it. I don't know if that test is still used.
Does anyone know where this term originated? Sounds very Perry Mason-like. I learnt the word 'stiff' (metaphorical synonym for a corpse) from him!
From Dave Wilton:
Smoking Gun
This phrase, meaning incontrovertible evidence of guilt, is of relatively recent origin. It
actually was first coined by Republican congressman Barber Conable during the
Watergate investigation. The smoking gun in question then was a 23 June 1973 tape of a
conversation between Richard Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman:
Haldeman: ... the FBI is not under control ... and you think the thing to do is
to get them, the FBI, to stop?
Nixon: Right, fine.
Upon hearing the tape, Conable stated that it "looked like a smoking gun," meaning that
from the tape it was clear that Nixon had approved the cover up. Conable may not have
been the first to use the phrase, but he was the first to get credit for using it.
It is somewhat surprising that the phrase is so recent, given that its imagery is so vivid
and obvious. Arthur Conan Doyle, in The Gloria Scott, a Sherlock Holmes story published
in April 1893, used the phrase smoking pistol: "the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol
in his hand." Conan Doyle's usage, however, was quite literal and not figurative. Also, it
referred to a murder case while the current usage is usually found in a political context.
Finally, there is no evidence to indicate that the phrase was used in the intervening
seventy years.
Is it used often? - up until recently, I mean.
according to OED (which I know dr. bill likes to "bad word") the New Yorker first used the phrase, and Conable actually echoed Conan Doyle's "smoking pistol".
Is it used often?In the anecdotal evidence department, note:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020402/020402-5.htmlThis was in the first ten hits googling
smoking-gun.
If I may, however, I'd like to post a reminder that in the past, political opinions and comments on this board have led to some ugliness; and I hope that we can avoid that happening again. Thanks, everybody.Sorry everyone, I guess I should have thought of that before I posted it.
should have thought of that
That's all right, Honey; I wasn't fussing, just reminding. As tension rises, nerves fray quicker; and it is much easier to not let something ugly start than it is to try and clean up afterwards. :-)
Like all here I understand that most words and sayings originate in spoken inventions or verbal mistakes and the few true examples of written origins that can be fixed in time are very likely serendip. Besides it doesn't matter a hoot who said it first except in as much as it helps give insight into the evolution of language. But damn, it is fun.
Ask any eight-year-old kid who grew up in the last mid-century who worshiped Hop-along-Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lash Larue, Tom Mix, Red Ryder, Tom Steele, and the Durango Kid, about a "Smoking Gun". A tight-cut still of a "smoking gun" was a pat art scene in one-out-of-three cowboy movies and was known to every scamp who owned a cap gun. It worked like this... Roy, Ted, Tom, or Lash, would walk into an abandoned cabin in search of Bart, Gridley, Max, or the Simmons Gang. Finding it empty he would turn to leave but then, out of the corner of his eye, he would see a smoking gun on a nearby table. He would then spin around and "BAM" a gunman fell from the loft. "BAM he plugged one hiding behind the curtains. "BAM" he shot another who had walked in from the kitchen. Outside the cabin we would hear the sound of hoofbeats as the rest of the gang got away.
Then...
Twenty years later some priss butt reporter drew upon this tradition to dramatize some flimsy evidence in order to convict "Tricky Dick" Nixon and the term has been misused ever since.
I bring this to the top to inform those who enjoy William Safire and don't see the Sunday New York Times every week that he addresses this very expression in this week's column (as with most major newspapers, registration required, no intimate info demanded
):
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/magazine/26ONLANGUAGE.html
Couldn't get in. I have been registered user for years but it wouldn't accept password login and kept popping up the registration screen. Tried to re-register and the registration program popped up again. I give up.
Can you cut and paste it?
(Here you are, Madam Wow [and anyone else interested]. I hope you don't mind that I didn't smarten up the quotes or rescue italics.)
January 26, 2003
Smoking Gun
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
"Blix: 'No Smoking Guns' in Iraq,'" headlined The Philadelphia Inquirer (or the "Fluffya Inkwire," as the locals say). "No 'Smoking Guns' So Far'' was The Washington Post's head. ''U.N. Inspectors Criticize Iraqis Over Arms List'' was The New York Times's more objective headline, with the hot phrase in the subhead: ''But search teams find no 'smoking gun.'''
The phrase earned such display because it was used by Hans Blix, chief inspector for biological and chemical arms, in his preliminary report to the United Nations Security Council two weeks ago. ''Evidently, if we had found any 'smoking gun,''' he wrote, ''we would have reported it to the Council. .. . The absence of smoking guns . . . is no guarantee that prohibited stocks or activities could not exist at other sites, whether aboveground, underground or in mobile units.'' With the issuance of his interim report, scheduled tomorrow, world headline writers will return to the phrase that would trigger overwhelming support for nonmetaphoric guns to start smoking.
When did that phrase first become the favorite figure of speech meaning ''incontrovertible incrimination''? The answer is elementary, Watson. In an 1893 Sherlock Holmes story, ''The Gloria Scott,'' Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of a grisly murder by a sham chaplain aboard a prison ship: ''We rushed into the captain's cabin . . . there he lay with his brains smeared over the chart of the Atlantic . . . while the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand at his elbow.'' A good copy editor would have fixed Doyle's awkward ''in his hand at his elbow,'' and Sir Arthur chose pistol rather than gun, but that Holmes citation seems to be the start of the cliche that grips us today.
It was made famous during the Golden Age of Political Coinage. The Watergate era coined or popularized Saturday night massacre, stonewalling, cover-up, dirty tricks, straight arrow, expletive deleted, third-rate burglary, plumbers, Deep Throat, Big Enchilada, enemies list and my personal favorite, twisting slowly in the wind. That was when Doyle's smoking pistol, which had changed in occasional usage over 80 years to smoking gun, blazed its way into dictionaries.
It first appeared in The New York Times on July 14, 1974, in an article by Roger Wilkins: ''The big question asked over the last few weeks in and around the House Judiciary Committee's hearing room by committee members who were uncertain about how they felt about impeachment was 'Where's the smoking gun?''' The question was rooted in a Nixon defense strategy, to narrow the grounds for impeachment to a provable crime. On July 31, Representative Jack Brooks of Texas told the impeachment panel that he thought Nixon was guilty of income-tax evasion: ''Millions of Americans will view this evidence as a so-called smoking gun.'' With insufficient proof, that charge did not stick.
On Aug. 5, the committee released a transcript of a recording of the meeting held two years earlier, on June 23, 1972, in which the White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, asked President Nixon, ''You think the thing to do is to get them, the F.B.I., to stop?'' and Nixon replied, ''Right, fine.'' Representative Barber Conable of New York promptly said that ''looked like a smoking gun,'' and the recording became known as ''the smoking-gun tape.''
Today, in applying the phrase to the inspection of Iraq for evidence of making weapons of mass destruction, those opposing an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime have adopted the defense strategy of Nixon's lawyers: to demand incontrovertible physical evidence, which journalists and United Nations officials agree to call the smoking gun. Proponents argue that circumstantial evidence points to a weapons buildup, and that United Nations Resolution 1441 places the burden of proof of disarmament on Iraq, which has not yet been forthcoming about producing evidence of a nonsmoking gun.
The Security Council, then, will soon be seized with the question made famous by restaurant hostesses: ''smoking or non?''
--Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
A reporter discussing Saddam hussein's first interview in 12 years on British Tv tonight said, "But there is no smoking quote."
Smoking quote?
Keeping this linguistic, please, I kind of like smoking quote as pointing to a quote of obvious self-incrimination (if that's the proper way to define it). And the assonance does give a pleasing ring to it. Has anyone ever heard smoking quote before?
smoking quote
would that be, like, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"?
[innocent wide-eyed-e]
Has anyone ever heard smoking quote before?
Nope. But I think it's an excellent bon mot on an already-tired catch-phrase!
Actually - and this is not political, really - this afternoon in the UN was not so much an Adlai Stevenson moment as a Pamela Stephenson moment ...
- Pfranz
Guess where I found her, CK? Capz City.
Smoking quote is ok as long as you don't inhale.
-Bubba
Michael Jackson was interviewed, also on British TV, a couple of evenings back. I didn't see it, but I gather he provided some "smoking quotes". To the extent that California prosecuters (I think it was California...seems likely) are showing some interest. Some of these 'names', when they're outside the US, seem to think that they're off-planet.