I was chatting online with a Chinese friend and was going to mention Murphy’s law when I thought she probably didn’t know what it was so I asked her if she knew what I meant by Murphy’s law and she said she knew the meaning of Murphy. Confused I asked her what is the meaning of Murphy and she said it meant potato. Huh? I asked her where on earth she got that from and she confessed she had looked it up in the dictionary which gave that meaning as slang. Hmmm. I have never heard that meaning of Murphy. So I go to Websters and it does not give that meaning but it gives this one:
Again, huh? Are these regional uses or what’s the deal? Are any of these accepted meanings?
The OED does give one definition of “Murphy” as a potato. It’s probably derived from the name “Murphy” as an Irish name, and the fact that the Irish are known for eating potatoes. However, the most recent cite was in 1857, so it’s probably not being used currently.
What you’re describing is the Murphy game, whose first cite is one year later than “Murphy’s Law” – but I suspect its origin is older.
“Murphy bed” is straightforward: they were first designed by William Murphey and sold by The Murphy Bed Company.
My understanding is that “Murphy” of “Murphy’s Law” was a character in a series of WWII-era military training cartoons, whose function was to show the viewers what not to do.
I chatted on-line once with a gentleman from Ireland and he nicknamed Murphys as “spud” for the potatoes and said it was very commun in Ireland to call the Murphys that way.
Murphy’s Law can be traced in print to 1955 so far.
There was a 1957 US Navy training film which used the term. Absolutely no evidence of it going to WWII. Some possible link to the 1949-1950 period with an actual military person named Murphy is still possible, but not yet proveable.
Wasn’t Murphy one of the engineers on the Air Force’s acceleration-tolerance experiments? I’m (almost) certain that I’ve seen that explanation from credible sources.
I have an old Cultural Revolution-era english-chinese dictionary, and, after much squinting and counting-of-radicals to check it against my chinese-english dictionary, I see that it only gives one definition for “murphy” – a potato.
(I love this dictionary- it’s heavily propaganda-laden. I started to build a web-page based around it last year, but quit after realizing that I couldn’t keep scanning stuff out of it without breaking the spine… I still have my favourite entries from A - D up, though.)
Larry, thanks for those links which I appreciate and enjoy. It seems some Chinese dictionaries have just been copying from each other since 150 years ago. They just added the revolutionary stuff _
It’s okay, we Westerner’s have been doing the same thing, from what I understand. I took a Chinese history course in college, and the instructor had spent five years living in China, and he spent a great deal of time explaining how the various job titles mentioned in the textbook were really inaccurate, and basically dated from the 18th Century and that had they been given modern job titles, we’d be able to understand what the hell the text was talking about.
