"it boggles the mind"

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been wondering about this for a while, but this morning’s “Funky Winkerbean” (oh God, why do I keep reading it?) mentioned it, so it reminded me.

I know that the dictionary (mine, anyway) says that “boggle” can be used both intransitively and transitively. Still, I’d always heard it used thus: “It boggles the mind.” Recently, though, I’ve heard more and more people say it this way: “The mind boggles” (as Les did in today’s comic).

Again, it does seem that either is acceptable, but why the switch? Or have people been saying it the latter way for a long time and I just never noticed? I’d swear that I never heard “the mind boggles” until the last year or two. Why have people switched (assuming they have)?

I’m sure this is up there with the dumber questions asked here, but what the heck.

Thanks.

2

I’m a 41-year-old from the UK, and I’ve always heard it as “the mind boggles.” So, yes, people have been saying it that way for a long time. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve heard “it boggles the mind” – so I’m in the opposite position to you. I think it’s just one of these things in language that swings with fashion, depending on what the prevaling influences are at any one time.

3

Agreed (I’m 48, also UK). I remember it being a catch-phrase in “The Perishers” (Daily Mirror cartoon strip) when I was a child.

4

A rather hurried search of “mind boggles” and “boggles the mind” in US newspapers from 1750-1970 shows a 1918 cite for “the mind boggles” written by the Paris correspondent of a British magazine. The first US cites are also “mind boggles” in 1948-49, then some “boggles the mind” from 1969. Not exactly an old phrase.

I leave it to others to interpret my skimpy data.

5

Hmmm… Well, maybe “it boggles the mind” is just more popular in my little section of the U.S., then. That just boggles the mind, doesn’t it? :slight_smile:

6

So what about “mind-boggling”? My feeling is that that is the original phrase. It returns the most google hits, anyway.

7

“mind-boggling” cited only in print from 1962.

8

PG Wodehouse was fond of “The imagination boggles”, as in:

“The imagination boggles at the thought of what she’d do if she found out,” said Llewellyn. He assumed a faraway look, and Monty could tell his imagination was boggling."

-Pearls, Girls, and Monty Bodkin

I’ve never read of anything else but the mind boggling or being boggled except in his work, but IMHO “it boggles the mind” makes just as much sense.

9

dutchboy. Thanks for the suggestion. Using that phrase, I found a cite from 1908. And US at that.

I also found out that there is an 1899 cite for the term “mind boggles.”

10

No problem.

11

Yes, actually the phrase “mind boggling” is why (to me) “it boggles the mind” makes more sense. If, for example, I said that something was “mind-blowing,” to me it seems more appropriate to say about this thing that “it blows the mind” rather than “the mind blows.” Ditto for “mind-numbing.”

Obviously, from what many have said, “the mind boggles” is the more common phrase, though, just not where I live, I guess.