A picture tells a story just as well as a large amount of descriptive text.
Origin
There are several varities of this phrase, including 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. The first time a form of the phrase appears in print is in James Kirke Paulding's New Mirror for Travellers, 1828:
"A look, which said as plainly as a thousand words."
This was followed by "One look is worth a thousand words", written by Frederick R. Barnard in Printer's Ink, December 1921.
Printer's Ink used another form of the phrase in March 1927, suggesting a Chinese origin:
"Chinese proverb. One picture is worth ten thousand words."
Whether this actually was a Chinese proverb is open to doubt. When the origin of a phrase is unknown but it sounds as though it fits into the exotic 'Confucius he say' style it is often credited to ancient China. This is a similar form of folk etymology that hijacks the romance of the sea and gives entirely land-locked phrases a nautical origin.
Definitions from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/14000.html
No comments:
Post a Comment