I’ve often wondered about this and tonight’s final Jeopardy answer brought it up again.
The question was basically, what three word phrase was made famous by Herbert Oglevee “Herb” Morrison while covering the Hindenburg disaster.
Looking up the definition of “humanity” it seems to be the opposite of how he used it. Wouldn’t a better phrase have been, “Oh the inhumanity”?
What am I missing?
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I don’t think you’re missing anything - the phrase doesn’t really make much sense.
If running coach’s definition is what he intended, then presumably he should have omitted the definite article:
“Oh, humanity!”
But I suspect he was just referring to the people dying, and I’m not sure that there’s much more to the odd turn of phrase than the fact that he was speaking under immense stress.
“Oh, the humanity” onboard the Hindenburg that is dying and suffering in this unfolding tragedy.
Actually, I can’t believe how many people misquote what was actually said:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/001/360/1362599_02bcdea730.jpg
I agree that’s what he meant. But the humanity on board the Hindenburg is not standard usage.
What you are missing is that Morrison was exclaiming in extreme emotional distress and wasn’t putting thought or logic into correct grammatical construction or word usage. What he was evidently expressing was something like “Oh the [suffering] humanity!”, with “humanity” just referring to the people on the airship.
I don’t think that any further explanation is needed.
It’s always been clear to me that this is what he meant, “oh, all those human beings on board that flaming ship!”. It’s a slightly odd turn of phrase but to me there’s never been any mystery about what he meant.
The second definition in the dictionary I just looked at is: “benevolence“
There’s never been any mystery to me about what he was trying to convey, that’s plainly obvious. And I don’t blame him for mis-speaking (if he did) under duress. But what is strange to me that his ‘odd turn of phrase’ which to me seems incorrect, has caught on as well as it did.
Yes, and what was the first definition?
Most words have more than one meaning. Using a word in a way that is consistent with one of its meanings, but not its others, is not a speech error, as you seem to be claiming.
This. After all it’s happened since under less trying circumstances.
“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
And what bugs me is Armstrong defending it all these years like he really said the (a).
You can hear it in the recording. “That’s one small step forman, one (pause “Holy shit! I blew it! I forgot the “a”. Cripes. Oh well, no one will notice. Carry on.”) giant leap for mankind.”
And besides, if he hadn’t had uttered such an odd and yet memorable turn of phrase, we couldn’t have Les Nessman describing the turkey giveaway with such an evocative turn of phrase.
Which usual meaning of “humanity” is this phrase consistent with? It is not usually a countable noun used to refer to a group of people.
I thought we had pretty much reached a consensus that this is an error, or at least idiosyncratic, sufficiently explained by his state of mind.
And that’s what I first thought of when I saw the title. I thought this might be a WKRP thread. Then, “…or maybe the Hindenburg…”
Les Nessman first, Hindenburg second.
I don’t know why I am the way I am…
True. But it’s interesting he retained enough control to shoo someone out of his way so he could keep reporting on the unfolding tragedy.
That’s one of the most inconsequential “debates” about famous utterances ever. It seems fairly clear to me that there was no “a” there, but so what? The article would make it more grammatical, but it’s actually more lyrical without it, and the meaning is clear. And I really doubt the pause means what you think. There seems to be a burst of static after every few words, and though I’m not sure what Armstrong was hearing, I suspect the pause was the result of all the static and possibly the half-duplex radio channel, and wanting to be sure the second part came through clearly. Even so, it did not – at least, I distinctly remember Walter Cronkite, on that famous live broadcast, initially not understanding what Armstrong had just said. Not that anyone was at fault for anything, but I’ve always thought it was actually more embarrassing for Cronkite.
Entirely different things. To speak clearly and correctly during a stressful event is an entirely different matter from a reporter responding to his instincts to cover a suddenly huge news story. The latter is pretty much instinctive, while the former is the exercise of learned formalisms.
Sure, the meaning is obvious from context. But I can’t agree that it’s “more lyrical”. The garbled version is nonsense on its face.
The whole point of the phrase is the contrast between the countable noun “a [one] man” and the uncountable “[all] mankind”. And the problem is that “man” (without the indefinite article) can be an uncountable noun that is an exact synonym for “mankind”. So the garbled version is effectively - “…one small step for mankind but a giant leap for mankind”. It’s nonsense unless you mentally adjust for the error. I think calling it “more lyrical” is… well, overly generous to Armstrong for mangling it!
I don’t want to go too far down this rat hole, and this is very much subjective, but what I meant by “lyrical” is that IMHO it has better prosody without the “a”, the single-syllabic “man” contrasting with “man | kind”. In fact I might even venture the opinion that this is precisely why it was so easy and natural to accidentally omit the “a”. Considering the arguments you’ve made in the past supporting non-standard language usage, it seems odd to be considering this to be “garbled” and “nonsense on its face”. My defense of Armstrong is essentially the ultimate descriptivist rationale: everyone knows exactly what it means, and it sounds better! 
Please don’t start regurgitating this old trope again. Descriptivists may not agree that all the rules you wish to prescribe are actual rules, but it’s a preposterous straw man to then infer that the descriptivist position is that are are no rules at all, that “anything goes”, that it’s impossible to make an error. I and others have refuted this silliness a dozen times, and I know that you know better.
Calling that a “descriptivist rationale” is nonsense. To a descriptivist linguist, what Armstrong said is an objective grammatical error, because there is no evidence in normal usage (in any dialect or register) that the uncountable noun “man” can have the same meaning as the intended countable noun “a man”.
I think he was cut off before he could say, “And the Nazis on board? Fuck 'em.”