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My daughter asks if this board can pinpoint for her the origin of the phrase, "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy," or the like.
Can you please help her out, ladies and gentleman? Thank you.
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Great question!  I can think of a lot of examples, but know not the origin.... [whiteness]The converse being: "How do you keep 'em down on the farm, now that they've seen gay Paree?" Origin: A WW1 song, probably misquoted.[unwhiteness]
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Unbelieveably, I searched this on The Phrase Finder, and the only near-hit I got was this: The Phrase Finder is based in Sheffield, England so we have a special interest in
this phrase since that's where the eponymous 1990s film is set. No definitive
explanation of where the phrase originates has emerged though. The most often
repeated is the notion that it derives from the suit hire business of Sir Montague
Burton. A complete dress suit, for a wedding etc, would be the Full Monty.
Another explanation derives from a Spanish card game where the pile of cards
on the table is called a 'monte'. Yet another comes from Field Marshall
Montgomery's alleged habit of wearing his full set of medals, or even his alleged
insistence on a full English breakfast every day. Although the phrase has been in
circulation prior to the film there don't appear to be any instances of it
appearing in print before 1986. Does this now qualify as a haunting? 
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I remember the phrase from WWII days, when it meant that US servicemen did not change much from going overseas. No clue has to origin.
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A complete dress suit, for a wedding etc, would be the Full Monty.
And another sort of full Monty for after the wedding in the nuptial chambers.
What has haunted you, WON, by the way? And did you misread the question as "You can take the boy out of the monty, but can't take the monty out of the boy?"
Dub
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What has haunted you, WON, by the way?Full Monty is haunting AWAD...evidently! and not even Uncle Tsuwm could ever confirm the etymology, there once were 3 Monty threads going at once...er, thrice!
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By the way, I'm not trying to steer away from Keiva's very intriguing inquiry...in fact it has me on a quest. A real toughie. The key would be the original analogy (boy/country). Without that, a search seems to be fruitless. It could be very ancient, go back to the Romans or classical Greeks. But something keeps hearkening me to a Biblical connotation...perhaps something like "you can take the sinner out of the sin, but you can't take the sin out of the sinner...you can only forgive." It could also relate to the concept of "original" sin. Anyone here enough of a Biblical scholar to perhaps zero in on this 'shot in the dark'?
I've used this saying regularly, in scores of subject combinations and usually in jest, over the years. I'm really curious. On the other hand, it could be modern...20th century Madison Avenue, an ad slogan we've forgotten. Who knows? Help!
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On the other hand, it could be modern...20th century Madison Avenue, an ad slogan we've forgotten. Who knows? Help!
Sorry, since this was posted I have had this dumb jingle going through my mind, over and over and over again! It is screaming to come out and if I don't release it it may haunt me forever!You can take Salem out of the country, but, you can't take the country out of Salem.There.....NOW LEAVE ME ALONE ALREADY! PHEW!
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This is the only clue I could turn up after exhaustive searching, Keiva. From a site called "Sayings and Everyday Expressions" (but nothing more there, what you see here is what you get).
BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THE COUNTRY OUT OF THE BOY---Changing the place a person lives
does not change one's character or personality.---B. Baer (1938.) Hollywood. ...
I searched extensively on the B. Baer lead, but found zilch.
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Sounds like Buddy Baer (q.v. http://us.imdb.com/Name?Baer,+Buddy) You could dig through his movies and look for quotes there.
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[white]You can take Salem out of the country,[/white]
There was a tune to that? You remember it? Poor girl. Go play in the snow.
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This was also the origin of the phrase the monty always gets his man.
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Could it be that this is somehow related to the phrase: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."? It has the same kind of term exchange, but that might just be common rhetorical effect.
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Well, that just goes to show you, Faldage...you can take the monty out of the full, but you can't take the full out of the monty.
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Found this in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:
[proverb] you can take a man out of the bay, but you can't take the bay out of the man
([1954] 1972 RUSSELL 22).
1974 Can Forum Mar, p. 25 Ted Russell, our leading local playwright, and a great
outharbourman himself, is fond of quoting a line from the eleventh epistle of Horace,
caelum non animum, mutant; qui trans mare current which he translates exactly in a
Newfoundland proverb: 'You can take the man out of the Bay, but you can't take the Bay
out of the man.'
Help with the actual Latin translation, anyone?
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caelum non animum, mutant; qui trans mare current
A little too literal, perhaps, but.
Heaven not spirit, they change; who run across the sea.
I might question the punctuation.
Post edit
Wait a minute, it starts making sense.
They change the sky (under which they are) but not their soul, those who travel across the sea. Or You can take the boy out of (wherever) but you can't take (wherever) out of the boy.
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Very helpful, Faldage! I'd always wondered about that one. I'd never heard it before coming here, where it's often quoted as
"You can take the b'y out of the bay, but you can't take the bay out of the b'y."
since men from outside of St. John's are referred to as baymen (b'y is the way they say "boy" here). If you're from St. John's you're a Townie, and if you're from anywhere else, you're from "around the bay".
[edit]
Another thing I'd read in the same section was that a derogatory word used by townies for people from the outports was "baywop". I wonder why "wop" is a derogatory suffix? We all know it's also used on its own in a derogatory manner, as well. Anyone?
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well, hello to your daughter, and please thank her for posing an intriguing question i've no idea where the phrase comes from... the only thing it reminds me of is John Denver  ... but i *do know the name of the rhetorical device employed, if anyone cares: antimetabole. i s'pose it'd also be a chiasmus of sorts, but antimetabole specifically denotes a reversal of terms, whereas a chiasmic passage only necessarily employs a grammatical reversal.
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I wonder why "wop" is a derogatory suffix? We all know it's also used on its own in a derogatory manner, as well.
And supposedly comes from the Italian for handsome. Got many Portuguese up that way, Bean? I know there are in Northern Mass and parbly Maine, too. Big into ocean fishing.
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I wonder why "wop" is a derogatory suffix? We all know it's also used on its own in a derogatory manner, as well. Anyone?
Bean, somewhere on this board Helen of troy said it came from US Immigrations designation "WithOut Papers."
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"WithOut Papers."
Boy does *that ever smell of internet legend.
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Boy does *that ever smell of internet legend.
Don't shoot the messenger.
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US Immigrations designation "WithOut Papers."I've read in several places (Urban Legends, and I think alt.English.usage FAQ) that that is a folk etymology. But I don't know what the real one is. The Dictionary of Newfoundland English ( http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/d7ction.html) implies that the term referred to university students working With Out Pay in the 1920s. Since I've read other things that say it's not an acronym, I'm not sure I believe that. Anyone have a better source?
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Derivations from acronyms start off with two strikes against them (should this be in Weekly Themes?) and I think the term is a little too wide spread to be of Newfoundland origin (no offense). My favorite etymological source goes with Italian guappo. http://www.bartleby.com/61/81/W0218100.html
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Looking at your dictionary, Bean, (and thanks for the link, it's going in *my bookmarks) I would guess we have something completely other to 'wop' meaning Italian.
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I think the term is a little too wide spread to be of Newfoundland origin (no offense).
Oh, I never thought that! I just wondered if there was some other common origin for both Newfoundland use and the person-of-Italian-origin-derogatory use. There was a large Portuguese presence here at one time, and that is reflected in some of the place names.
When did the word enter common use? It's possible that Newfoundlanders at the time heard it being used elsewhere for immigrants and applied it to the workers (who seemed to be brought in From Away) referred to in the Nfld. dictionary definition. Really, the dictionary isn't much help on the etymology of that one.
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common origin for both Newfoundland use and the person-of-Italian-origin-derogatory use.
I think we've got two independent origin words that just happen to be spelled the same. The etymology given in the Newfie Dictionary looks OK to me and is of an era with lots of similar type words. See WAVES, WAC, WRENs, SPARs, etc. All these, I believe (tsuwm could veto me here) came from the '40s.
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uh, faldage, "wop" is not a "similar type word" to WAVE, WAC, WREN, SPAR, etc.
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Keiva, I don't know what those other acronyms Faldage noted stand for, but here's what the Newfoundland Dictionary says about the Newfoundland use of the word wop(NOT the same as the general use):
wop2 n Volunteer worker from other countries doing odd jobs at the International Grenfell
Mission, Labrador.
[1917] 1972 GORDON 99 Due to arrive any minute ... were a species known as WOPS.
They represented the unskilled Volunteer force that Grenfell gathered in from the
universities and other sources of supply. They willingly undertook all the odd jobs that
were so necessary to the running of the Hospitals, such as stoking, digging, unloading
freight, or anything else. 1920 WALDO 145 'Bill' Norwood—one of the volunteer 'wops'
building the Battle Harbour reservoir. 1941 WITHINGTON 170 The work of these 'wops,'
the word for the aides who came in the summer WithOut Pay, was very
desultory—unloading cargoes of supplies, sorting clothes and arranging them for sale,
and doing odd chores. P 130-67 ~s: summer workers, usually students, who work at the
Grenfell Hospital without pay.
It came up because of another definition under "bay":
bay wop: contemptuous (city) term for an 'outport' Newfoundlander (P 245-56).
1970 JANES 146 She was originally a young baywop whose family had recently moved
to Milltown and settled there. 1979 O'FLAHERTY 175 'Baywops' [in Janes' novel, House
of Hate] are generally seen ... as semi-retarded and contemptible.
Just wanted to clarify a bit, since I don't think either of us had posted the definitions we were discussing.
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You tell'em, Bean.
Keiva, it's like the difference between JAP and Jap. Although both are patronizing and contemptuous terms, the former is an acronym which expands to Jewish American Princess and the latter is a shortening of the word Japanese.
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Faldage, you're qutie right that the homomonym J.A.P. and Jap are separate terms, and that each is racial epithet slur. (The former perhaps cannot strictly be called "racial", as it is limited to a particular subset of the racial group.) And "wop" is also a racial slur. Some of the other terms mentioned, however, are not racial slurs: WAVES = Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. WAC = Women Army Corp WRENS = Women's Royal Naval Service. SPAR = women's reserve of U.S. Coast Guard (contraction of motto semper partus, "always prepared") BTW, credit here to bartleby, not to any encyclopedic knowledge on my part.
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racial slur
My point was that the etymology the Newfoundland instance of WOP was free of the stigma of acronymism that generally counts against such etymologies. I refer, e.g., to 'Frequent Unlawful Carnal Knowledge', 'Constable On Patrol' and other acronyms that are invented to explain the origins of certain words. The Newfoundland instance appears not to be a racial slur and if it has negative connotations they come from the Us vs. Them mindset discussed elsewhere on this board. The Newf. WOP would be applied, as I understand it, to whites of whatever ethnic or religious origin, blacks, orientals, whatever equally.
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[slapping own head at own stupidity -e] Now I get it, Faldage. Sometimes you have to explain things to me in words of one syllable. [mutter at self -e]
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'Frequent Unlawful Carnal Knowledge'Hey! I thought that was 'Fornication Under the Crowned King'!  wop: And where did dago come from as an Italian slur?
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My daughter asks if this board can pinpoint for her the origin of the phrase, "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy," or the like.
If we can't get a solid origin, she asks if we can confirm that this is a familiar expression. There is some dispute among the co-authors of a book she is working on, and your input would be appreciated.
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a familiar expression.
Oh, it's familiar enough. You don't hear it all that *often, but when you do (in all its variations) it *is familiar.
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she asks if we can confirm that this is a familiar expression.Remembered this site from doing my first search, Keiva. This quote should confirm it as an old, common saying for her. It's also in the body of the article. And make sure you direct her to the author's credentials at the bottom of the page, that'll confirm it as a solid source for her. Hope this helps! http://www.tantalizingtrivialities.com/article1003.html[edit:] Looking over Mr. Gardner's credits it seems he's also something of a folklorist. He has his e-mail posted, so maybe he has the answer that's been stumping us all about the origin of the phrase. Have her try him and see.
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I found the answer.
"You can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy", in The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, the proverb is attributed to the book:
1938 "B. Baer" in Baer & Major Hollywood
---
Hollywood By Baer & Major
Sports writer, humorist and cartoonist Arthur "Bugs" Baer put together a book in 1938 with Henry Major called Hollywood in which Major did caricatures of the celebrated players of the
day and Baer wrote accompanying humourous commentary.
The book was released in a limited edition of eight-hundred copies.
Source: projectdisaster.com/media/Hollywood.pdf
Cached PDF source:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pRZzz58BVgoJ:projectdisaster.com/media/Hollywood.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ru
Google books:
The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs
By Jennifer Speake
Oxford University Press, Sep 24, 2015
Page 33
Link:
https://books.google.ru/books?id=GtBxCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=B.+Baer+(1938.)+Hollywood&source=bl&ots=2zjU0aHdfv&sig=6lv_ItGMlzAK2ruw06UC00dEFLU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAWoVChMI2JnUxNnJyAIVQtVyCh0htAcG#v=onepage&q=B.%20Baer%20(1938.)%20Hollywood&f=false
And it only took me 3 hours 41 minutes of waiting for administrator's approval to post this answer!
Last edited by travbailey; 10/17/15 09:15 PM.
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I'll say Welcome, I guess, since you replied to a 13 year old post.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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Something tells me Keiva is never going to know here question was finally answered...
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Guess not, well she responded to a 13 year old post. We can wait
another decade.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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Well sir, I followed your links, downloaded the book, and looked through it to find the instance of this saying.
As you note, the book was caricatures of Hollywood actors of the day, with a humorous saying written below their name. It is 166 pages long with one actor/caricature/saying per page, one page forward, and 165 actors.
Under the caricature and name of one Jimmy Stewart, reads "You can take a boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of a boy."
Thank you for posting this!! Better late than never.
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"Rainmaker" eh? (lol)
The truth only need wait until the eclipse of 2017!
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'Twas my name at the other place till Stuart said I needed killin'.
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"We each see what we need to see. Beautiful, isn’t it?"
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I'll say Welcome, I guess, since you replied to a 13 year old post. . ...and he left the reply here and one other post. I guess these forums are still found wanting. ...tom...
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I'll say Welcome, I guess, since you replied to a 13 year old post. . ...and he left the reply here and one other post. I guess these forums are still found wanting. . ...and yes, only my second post overall, first one since 2014 I believe. I will strive to be more ...'regular'.. ...tom...
Last edited by sleeper54; 01/31/23 06:32 AM.
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We are here at your pleasure, and whenever you care to post.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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