He thinks he’s a wit, and he’s half right. Though some might attribute the quote to Shakespeare, it’s nowhere to be found in the concordances. Grant explains how many of these witticisms have been tumbled about by old newspaper columnists, humorists, and vaudeville performers. Though their origins are muddled, they can still be a joy to hear and say. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Old Witticisms”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is John Pluess from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Hi, John.
Hey, John, what’s up?
Well, I was just calling in with a phrase that my mother had used for years and years. Mother was an English professor in college, loved Shakespeare, and had for years used a phrase, many phrases from Shakespeare, but used this one. She would say, he thinks he’s a wit and he’s half right. And when I would question her about the origin of the phrase, she said, oh, well, you know, it’s Shakespeare.
Well, all of the other Shakespearean phrases and quotes that she used, I could find. But I’ve never been able to find this one. So do you have an idea?
You’re doing full text searches or looking in the concordances and the glossaries and all this. I mean, there’s more literature about Shakespeare than there is stuff written by Shakespeare himself. And no luck there, huh?
No luck. If you look in the Shakespeare concordances, those are the collection of works that show all of the uses of every single word in Shakespeare. You look up the word, if it was in there, wit, and it would say, well, it’s in these five plays and these three acts, right? And it would show you the words around it. If you look in those concordances, you don’t really see anything quite like this. I mean, wit and half wit are used in a variety of places, but I just don’t see the answer there.
What I do find outside of Shakespeare is that this was the sort of witticism or bromide that was included in newspapers in the 30s and 40s and 50s to kind of fill out short columns. You know, they just put it down at the bottom with a little star above it and just a little jokey thing. But I can’t find it much earlier than 1933. That’s the best that I can do on that.
It reminds me of the quote, though, about I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man. I might speak of that quote.
Yes, it’s more than that. Well, the dating of the phrase that you gave would certainly coincide with my mother. She was born in 1924, so when she was teaching, it was in the 40s. So that would certainly fit. I thank you very much for that. I’m just glad to know that it wasn’t my failure to find it in Shakespeare.
Thanks for calling, John.
Thanks, John. Take care.
Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.
There are a lot of those quotations that people think are from Shakespeare, but that aren’t really. You know, it occurs to me there have been so many parodies of this. I mean, it’s the kind of thing that the Marx Brothers might have worked into some of the parody material that they did. It sounds like Groucho, doesn’t it? He thinks he’s a wit and he’s half right.
And vaudeville material was a lot of times just spun off. I mean, many of the films that we have today basically have Shakespearean plots, if not the exact words. But I just wonder if it’s not from some closely related kind of popular work that wasn’t really Shakespeare.
Could be. You know, there’s just nothing new under the sun.
Oh, no, wait. Nice. That’s clever.
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