# What is the Origin of "\_\_\_ \_\_\_\_ Does Not a \_\_\_\_ Make"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 9, 2007, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850 "2007-11-09T23:45:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Charger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df788c/32.png) [@Charger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charger)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/1 "2007-11-09T23:45:36Z")
I come across this all the time, especially when there is a discussion online where someone is trying to prove a point to an opponent. It has become a fancy replacement for “on the contrary…” I suspect it originated with Yoda. I’m not a Star Wars fan, but I am aware of Yoda’s tendency to arrange words differently. Rearranging words in a sentence does not a logical, coherent, easy-to follow with total and absolute comprehension sentence make. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/2 "2007-11-09T23:57:32Z")
“The activity of happiness must occupy an entire lifetime; for one swallow does not a summer make.” attributed to Aristotle (who was a bugger for the bottle) ---
**Author:** ![askeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb9ed0/32.png) [@askeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/askeptic)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/3 "2007-11-10T00:12:42Z")
Aristotle, the first Jedi. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/4 "2007-11-10T00:25:01Z")
But the guilt with the person who translated Aristotle undoubtedly belongs … In general, the rhetorical device of changing expected word order is call hyperbaton. See “To the Winds Throwing Word Order!” on this page, which starts out with the “does not make” construct as an example, before listing several literary instances: [http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html](http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/schemes.html) Actually, I tend to think of Yoda as “German word order”. In German sentence construction, the verb at the end of the sentence comes. Quite easy it is to do. And people batty to drive. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/5 "2007-11-10T00:50:34Z")
[QUOTE=yabob] I tend to think of Yoda as “German word order”. In German sentence construction, the verb at the end of the sentence comes. Quite easy it is to do. And people batty to drive. [/QUOTE] As as Mark Twain put it: “Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” ---
**Author:** ![Nars\_Glinley](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nars_glinley/32/8177_2.png) [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/6 "2007-11-10T01:16:14Z")
[QUOTE=Xema] As as Mark Twain put it: “Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” [/QUOTE] As an example, in [The Awful German Language.](http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html) > [@Mark Twain](#): > > “The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED.” ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/7 "2007-11-10T02:05:10Z")
Also a literary style of _Time_ magazine, famously mocked by _The New Yorker_ “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind…Where it will all end, knows God.” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/8 "2007-11-10T03:04:31Z")
[QUOTE=kunilou] Also a literary style of _Time_ magazine, famously mocked by _The New Yorker_ “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind…Where it will all end, knows God.” [/QUOTE] Let’s give writer Wolcott Gibbs the credit, not the mere vehicle for it. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/9 "2007-11-10T04:05:21Z")
In linguistics it’s called [SOV (subject-object-verb)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_Object_Verb), and many languages all over the world use it normally.They include Amharic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Tamil, Turkish, and many related languages. I always assumed Yoda’s SOV was meant to give the impression of Japanese word order, maybe because of the Zen-master robe and demeanor. Most of the time, German is SVO like English. Ordinary German sentences with simple verbs are SVO–_Sie liebt dich, ja, ja, ja_. German only uses verb forms at the end of the sentence under certain conditions, like when it’s the second half of a compound, when the first half goes in front of the object as in SVO. _Sie hat dich geliebt_. The odd thing about German compound verbs is how they’re split up with pieces at either end of the object. Wikipedia says: “German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar.” Latin had flexible word order, but the default arrangement in Latin too was SOV. Believe it or not, SOV is the most frequent type of language in the world. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/10 "2007-11-10T05:53:00Z")
One of the best-known examples is from Richard Lovelace, a 17th-century poet: “Stone walls do not a prison make / nor iron bars a cage”. Here’s [the original](http://www.bartleby.com/101/348.html). ---
**Author:** ![Omi\_no\_Kami](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Omi\_no\_Kami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omi_no_Kami)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/11 "2007-11-10T06:02:53Z")
I always figured it was supposed to resemble Japanese, mainly because Yoda always reminded me of [Morihei Ueshiba](http://www.aikidojournal.com/images/catalog/ph001s_full.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/12 "2007-11-10T13:24:19Z")
[QUOTE=MikeS] One of the best-known examples is from Richard Lovelace, a 17th-century poet: “Stone walls do not a prison make / nor iron bars a cage”. Here’s [the original](http://www.bartleby.com/101/348.html). [/QUOTE] Or, the variant: Glass walls do not a prism make. ::: ducking ::: ---
**Author:** ![Jman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jman/32/4416_2.png) [@Jman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jman)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-origin-of-___-____-does-not-a-____-make/425850/13 "2007-11-10T14:38:58Z")
[QUOTE=yabob] Actually, I tend to think of Yoda as “German word order”. In German sentence construction, the verb at the end of the sentence comes. Quite easy it is to do. And people batty to drive. [/QUOTE] But that’s only true in complex sentences, past perfect, and those with modal verbs. Standard subject-verb-object sentences are constructed like in English in most cases. Ich gehe ins Kino. (I am going to the movies.) Er fuhr zum Laden. (He drove to the store.) The modal verbs move the action verb to the end of the sentence, as does past perfect tense: Ich möchte nach Hause fahren. (I would like to drive home.) Ich habe meine Gitarre gespielt. (I have played my guitar.) (I see now Johanna has addressed this as well.)