# Carrot and stick? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 22, 2001, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748 "2001-06-22T05:56:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![City\_Gent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a87d85/32.png) [@City\_Gent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/City_Gent)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/1 "2001-06-22T05:56:42Z")
What’s the origin of the phrase “carrot and stick”? You always hear people using it to mean a combination of reward and punishment, for example, “I take a carrot-and-stick approach to my son’s grades; for every A he brings home, he gets to spend 30 minutes in his room with my collection of old Hustlers, but for every C, he has to clean the birdshit off my car for a month.” In this case, the carrot would be the Hustlers (reward) and the birdshit would be the stick (punishment, as if the stick were used to hit you). I seem to recall an old Little Rascals cartoon where they have a donkey pulling a cart, and to get the donkey to start pulling, a kid hangs a carrot tied to the end of a stick in front of the donkey, so he keeps walking towards it. Isn’t this the “carrot and stick” idea? Both the carrot and stick are involved in the incentive. Nobody gets hit with the stick. Or am I full of beans? ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/2 "2001-06-22T07:38:48Z")
kinda… you wave the carrot in front of the donkey and you hit it on the ass with the stick. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/3 "2001-06-22T12:08:47Z")
I’ve always known it as carrot **on a** stick (i.e. the stick is merely to enable the carrot to be extended in front of the donkey’s nose and thus encourage it to walk). I think the idea of the double-sided carrot=reward/stick=punishment came afterwards (possibly quite recently) as a wordplay on the carrot and stick theme. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/4 "2001-06-22T12:40:33Z")
I agree with **Mangetout**. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/5 "2001-06-22T13:19:16Z")
[Washee Ironee](http://us.imdb.com/Details?0025961), but the critter was actually a goat. There was a different one with a mule called “Algebra,” [Honky Donkey](http://us.imdb.com/Details?0025268), but that one didn’t involve a carrot. The mule “went” if someone sneezed, and “stopped” when it heard a bell (or alarm). ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/6 "2001-06-22T13:39:41Z")
> [@](#): > > The Usenet Newsgroup alt.usage.english has debated this expression several times, most recently in spring 1998. No one there presented definitive evidence, but dictionaries agree that the proper expression is “the carrot or the stick”. > > One person on the Web mentions an old “Little Rascals” short in which an animal was tempted to forward motion by a carrot dangling from a stick. I think the image is much older than that, going back to old magazine cartoons (certainly older than the animated cartoons referred to by correspondents on alt.usage.english); but I’ll bet that the cartoon idea stemmed from loose association with the original phrase “the carrot or the stick” rather than the other way around. from [here](http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/carrot.html) ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/7 "2001-06-22T14:16:30Z")
I’m sorry to say that _Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins_ agrees with the “carrot at one end, stick at the other” argument, though the evidence it offers boils down to a Churchill quote that may or may not exist and a half-remembered snatch of Humphrey Bogart dialogue. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/8 "2001-06-22T16:20:49Z")
"We shall continue to operate on the Italian donkey at both ends, with a carrot and with a stick”… Winston Churchill ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/9 "2001-06-22T16:34:01Z")
I’m not sure which idea is truly older, but neither can be considered _recent_. The last time this came up, I tracked both back to almost the 1920s. (I may not have posted my answers since they were pretty inconclusive.) The cartoon of the sleepy _trabajero_ sitting on a cart being pulled by a donkey chasing a dangling carrot was a favorite of such periodicals as the **New Yorker**. On the other hand, I found sever 1930’s references that indicated “lure with the carrot while threatening to beat with the stick.” **beagle** came up with a link to this discussion on a British [Phrasefinder Message Board](http://www.shu.ac.uk/web-admin/phrases/bulletin_board/3/messages/182.html) in the thread this past April. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2001, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/carrot-and-stick/69748/10 "2001-06-22T16:38:28Z")
That’s the one, **samclem**.