Fun fact. The jack of all trades idiom has evolved and been added to over the centuries. Here the conclusion of an analysis from stack exchange
Conclusions
To sum up, I offer this timeline of the earliest occurrences I could find for the various forms of jack of all trades and the proverbial phrases built up around it:
1618 Jack-of-all-trades
1631 Tom of all Trades
1639 John-of-all-trades
1721 Jack of all trades, and it would seem, Good at none
1732 Jack of all Trades is of no Trade
1741 Jack of all trades, and in truth, master of none
1785 a Jack of all trades, but master of none
1930 a Jack of all trades and a master of one
2007 Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one
The extra-long version of the expression may be considerably older than the 2007 earliest established occurrence might suggest—perhaps even a decade or two older. But it isn’t the original form of the expression; and in comparison with the forms that arose during the 1700s, it is quite young.
This is one of my favorites because the shortened version is the actual opposite of the original. My family used the short version a lot. Hearing the long version for the first time felt kind of liberating :D
There is a good writeup on the English Language stack exchange and on Wikipedia all of whose early sources are for the normal version or things like it https://english.stackexchange.com/a/508940
If you have a better citation, please share, but since they only find the Tumblr version from the 1990s I’m saying it’s bollocks.
No, but to me it’s a stereotype of Tumblr users that they go fucking nuts for any of that kind of “counter-cultural secret knowledge” stuff even if it’s straight up lies.
So I’m not saying “Tumblr version” to mean they invented it but to mean they love it and (helped) popularise it.
“Just one bad apple!” One bad apple spoils the entire barrel/bunch.
“Jack of all trades, master of none.” Jack of all trades, master of none, oft times better than a master of one.
“Great minds think alike.” Great minds think alike, but fools never differ.
Fun fact. The jack of all trades idiom has evolved and been added to over the centuries. Here the conclusion of an analysis from stack exchange
“Blood is thicker than water” is actually “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”
This is one of my favorites because the shortened version is the actual opposite of the original. My family used the short version a lot. Hearing the long version for the first time felt kind of liberating :D
If you read the Wikipedia article on the matter though, the long form given here does not seem to be “the original” by any means.
The “short” proverb is many hundred years old. The “long form” first appeared in the 1990s by a specific author.
It’s more an interpretation to negate an old proverb that the author disagreed with than anything.
A little sad, but thanks for adding this!
Damn bro, what a rollercoaster
No it isn’t, someone on Tumblr just made that up
Some time ago I looked it up, because I feared the same. There’s actually medieval examples of the full phrase.
There is a good writeup on the English Language stack exchange and on Wikipedia all of whose early sources are for the normal version or things like it https://english.stackexchange.com/a/508940
If you have a better citation, please share, but since they only find the Tumblr version from the 1990s I’m saying it’s bollocks.
tumblr existed in the 90s?
No, but to me it’s a stereotype of Tumblr users that they go fucking nuts for any of that kind of “counter-cultural secret knowledge” stuff even if it’s straight up lies.
So I’m not saying “Tumblr version” to mean they invented it but to mean they love it and (helped) popularise it.
Time flies when the full quote is “time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana”