# When did "pull oneself by one's bootstraps" flip meaning ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 7, 2018, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619 "2018-10-07T18:51:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/61 "2018-10-12T21:02:15Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Aside from the use of “less” for “fewer” (a minor peeve of mine), how would anyone notice any thing unusual about your example utterance? “Their” is pronounced the same as “there,” “i” is pronounced the same as “I,” and “could of” is pronounced the same as “could have” (unless some is speaking an a deliberately affected manner (and I’m someone who pronounces the “r” twice in “February”). Excuse my own sloppy verbiage. What I meant to illustrate in that particular example was the kind of crap we see in written postings all over the Internet. At the back of my mind was the fact that we also have significant issues in spoken language, but that was intended to be an example of how poorly some people write. ETA: > [@Andy\_L](#): > > (and I’m someone who pronounces the “r” twice in “February”). … and that’s the correct way to pronounce it (there are two "R"s, after all)! To quote Mrs. Slocombe in _Are You Being Served?_, “and I’m unanimous in that!” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/62 "2018-10-12T21:03:05Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Excuse my own sloppy verbiage. What I meant to illustrate in that particular example was the kind of crap we see in written postings all over the Internet. At the back of my mind was the fact that we also have significant issues in spoken language, but that was intended to be an example of how poorly some people write. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2018, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/63 "2018-10-12T22:41:05Z")
A couple of final comments from me, since I’ve just realized that we’re in GQ, and this whole conversation probably belongs somewhere else. Anyway, no harm done I hope, since the original question was covered pretty comprehensively. Descriptivism _per se_ is simply the scientific process of describing language empirically, it _is_ linguistics. In itself, it does not involve making value judgments about language. However, it’s certainly true that a deeper scientific understanding of language can have a strong influence on one’s values. There’s a strong negative correlation between belligerent prescriptivist tendencies and knowledge of scientific linguistics. To the extent that prescriptivists do try to make empirical claims, more often than not they are quite wrong (see Pinker’s “Language Mavens” chapter in _The Language Instinct_, or Geoff Pullum’s [evisceration of Strunk & White](http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/50years.pdf)). On the other hand, people who have greater expertise in linguistics usually tend to be much more circumspect about making strong value judgments. In part, that’s where the misconception that “descriptivism means anything goes” arises from: if a prescriptivist makes a spurious claim that a “rule” exists, the first inclination of a linguist is to examine (and often demolish) the supposed _objective_ foundation for the claim, rather than necessarily to express any strong personal value judgment about the aesthetics of the matter. Why is that? In principle, there’s no reason that one can’t be an expert linguist, study language empirically as it is actually spoken, and _also_ have opinions (even strident opinions) about how language _should_ be spoken. Well, I think it’s not difficult to understand. A scientific appreciation for how language really works allows you to appreciate the complexity of the _real_ empirical rules of language, how they evolve spontaneously to reach consensus across wide social groups, and how all dialects have different but equally rich grammars. When you understand that language _looks after itself_ in spontaneous and remarkable ways, I think it’s natural that the last thing you feel much inclination to do is to try to _tell_ language how to behave. When a linguist encounters diversity within a dialect, his first reaction is likely to be “that’s curious” rather than to decry one variant as deviant. I’m genuinely mystified about how annoyed and angry so many people can get in their insistence that _this way of speaking is right and pure_ whereas _that way of speaking is wrong and ignorant_: it’s clear that there’s a [social subtext](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004244.html) involved. I honestly can’t recall ever being _annoyed_ at the way anyone speaks - not through virtue or liberal values, I honestly just don’t think about it in that way. When people speak in different dialects, when young people start using language differently, or even when people make true errors, it’s just _interesting_ to understand how it works, and I don’t feel that civilization is in jeopardy. Wolfpup, since you’re someone who’s so invested in language _per se_, and you’re at a level of far greater sophistication than the typical ignorant prescriptivist, what puzzles me is why you don’t seem to share this fundamental scientist’s attitude of _curiosity_ when you encounter the diversity of language, and why instead you apparently choose to expend so much energy on wanting to _purify_ it. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2018, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/64 "2018-10-13T03:12:17Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Why is that? In principle, there’s no reason that one can’t be an expert linguist, study language empirically as it is actually spoken, and _also_ have opinions (even strident opinions) about how language _should_ be spoken. I find all this stuff fascinating (I’m not a linguist, but I enjoy reading popular works about linguistics). A few years ago, I read a great article about the process of regularization of verbs in English [Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language - PMC](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2460562/) - the authors found evidence that the amount of time it takes a verb to regularize is inversely proportional to the frequency of use of the word (which makes sense of course). It still irritates me to hear people say that someone “Pleaded guilty” - I have a strong sense that it should be "Pled guilty. I suspect that in 30 years when I say “pled” I’ll sound a bit unusual. An older friend of mine recently told me the surprising fact that “sibling” was not a common word in English when he was younger. Sure enough, when I checked Google Ngrams and the OED, all the usages before 1970 or so were in technical literature, not in popular works (I vaguely remember learning the German word for “sibling” in 1980 or so, and translating it as “Brother or sister” because “sibling” (though a word I had read) was in my daily vocabulary). Today, people commonly say things like “do you have any siblings?” - but I had not noticed the change in usage until my friend mentioned it (he was annoyed at a book that supposedly took place well before 1970 but had people saying “sibling” a lot). ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2018, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/65 "2018-10-13T05:42:33Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Another example is Nimrod - a Biblical allusion to the great hunter. Obviously being called a Nimrod is a compliment, right? Well, no. Not since Bugs Bunny used the term ironically to refer to Elmer Fudd. Now it’s an insult. Too many people heard the word first from Bugs Bunny (or people repeating him) since Bugs was very popular and Biblical references have declined in frequency. Anybody who thinks that “Nimrod” is, or even can be, a compliment doesn’t understand the biblical reference. Nimrod was a very wicked person. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2018, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/66 "2018-10-13T06:18:36Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > Anybody who thinks that “Nimrod” is, or even can be, a compliment doesn’t understand the biblical reference. Nimrod was a very wicked person. Any purported dispute with Yahweh is hardly relevant. It’s not a question of whether he was a good or bad man. His is described in the bible as a “mighty hunter”, and that was the reference that Bugs intended, sarcastically. But after the Bugs Bunny cartoon, “nimrod” came to mean something completely different - a dork, a socially inept person. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/67 "2018-10-13T20:03:49Z")
Really it just seems that the original irony was lost over time when used in other contexts. The computer use of the term earlier is a perfect example of this “bootstrap” was used to describe a hard “chicken or the egg” problem, and originally related to getting a compiler on a system while not being able to compile code. Operating systems are a far later developments and producing a self-compiling compiler was a large problem. Today people just assume their phones, computers etc…will “boot” and the challenge and joke was lost. Just like Americans adopted “Yankee Doodle” as a non-insult it seems quite likely that they took the insult of "pulling up hard enough on their bootstraps.” from the Munchausen story. Perhaps if Monty python had been around earlier this phrase would have been less likely to lose the original context. “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/68 "2018-10-14T00:21:53Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Any purported dispute with Yahweh is hardly relevant. It’s not a question of whether he was a good or bad man. His is described in the bible as a “mighty hunter”, and that was the reference that Bugs intended, sarcastically. But after the Bugs Bunny cartoon, “nimrod” came to mean something completely different - a dork, a socially inept person. Yeah. As an Englishman, Arthur Conan Doyle certainly considered Napoleon to be one of history’s great villains - but he still called Moriarty “The Napoleon of Crime” as a mark of his (fictional) prominence in his field. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/69 "2018-10-14T05:01:24Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > It still irritates me to hear people say that someone “Pleaded guilty” - I have a strong sense that it should be "Pled guilty. I suspect that in 30 years when I say “pled” I’ll sound a bit unusual. I feel a mental twitch every time I read the somebody kneeled down. I still feel it should be knelt down. But I acknowledge this is just an archaism; there’s no rational reason why the verb kneel should be a special case in its past tense - standardizing it as kneeled makes sense. It’s like how the plural of eye used to be eyne; people eventually just starting using eyes, even though it was improper. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/70 "2018-10-14T10:03:39Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I feel a mental twitch every time I read the somebody kneeled down. I still feel it should be knelt down. But I acknowledge this is just an archaism; there’s no rational reason why the verb kneel should be a special case in its past tense - standardizing it as kneeled makes sense. It’s like how the plural of eye used to be eyne; people eventually just starting using eyes, even though it was improper. I always just look stuff like this up in the dictionary whenever I’m not sure. It seems that both “kneeled” and “knelt” are acceptable; neither is marked archaic, so one can use whichever sounds right or suits one’s fancy. However, your mental twitch is mistaken: “kneeled” is the original past and past participle while “knelt” is a new-fangled variation dating from the 19th century. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2018, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619/71 "2018-10-14T13:24:08Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > “kneeled” is the original past and past participle while “knelt” is a new-fangled variation dating from the 19th century. That’s funny. Reminds me of people thinking that “burgle” is an ancient verb, when it is in fact a backformation coined in the 19th century some years after the coining of “burglarize” [Burgle or Burglarize: What do Burglars do? | Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/do-burglars-burgle-or-burglarize) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-pull-oneself-by-ones-bootstraps-flip-meaning/822619.md?page=3)