sea change
From Shakespeare's The Tempest...
Now how does something so poetic get so abused in corporate business talk, like the Oct 31/05 Bill Gates memo on how Internet Services is the next big thing...?
Tragic indeed.
Origins of the expression courtesy of World Wide Words and Random House.
Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Now how does something so poetic get so abused in corporate business talk, like the Oct 31/05 Bill Gates memo on how Internet Services is the next big thing...?
Tragic indeed.
Origins of the expression courtesy of World Wide Words and Random House.
3 Comments:
Reading the phrase "sea change" in an article is like finding a hair in your sandwich. Anything else from that point on is tainted.
Of all the cliché's that get tossed around, "sea change" bothers me the most.
By
Anonymous, at 10:38 pm
Bill must have known that Darren, he follows it up with only one sentence!
Here is another Shakespeare quote that is still used today and pretty much means the same thing now as it did in the 17th Century. "To hoist with one's own petard" it is originally from Hamlet.
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard; and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.
It is interesting that in one situation the allegorical conotation remains, while in the other example the original meaning has been bastardized. Helen
By
Anonymous, at 10:44 am
Craig wanted to know the meaning of "sea change."
A change caused by the sea: "Of his bones are coral made:/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a sea change" (Shakespeare).
Of course there are these definitions:
Cee Change: When your professor discovered that you cheated on your paper.
And:
Si, Change: A comment from an Hispanic Beggar
And:
See Change: The blue on the pregnancy test
By
Anonymous, at 10:21 am
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