5 ms·
The funny thing to me about this title is who brought that term to English in the first place. It came into the vernacular back in 1991 when Saddam Hussein clai
by Lendal 3y ago
The funny thing to me about this title is who brought that term to English in the first place. It came into the vernacular back in 1991 when Saddam Hussein claimed the Kuwait War would become "the mother of all wars". It didn't. It lasted about 24 hours, but the phrase has lasted much longer. It's so weird how language evolves, who has the power to do it, and who doesn't.
So for me, the title means that this breach is only of importance to the people who want it to be. Everyone else will simply ignore it after 24 hours, just like the first Kuwait War.
- JetSpiegel 3y ago"This aggression will not stand", as The Dude says
- modeless 3y agoGoogle Ngram viewer does indicate a sharp rise in use of the phrase starting in 1990: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+mother+of+all&year_start=1700&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the+mother+of+...
- smcin 3y ago"The mother of all X" (battles/wars/bombs/etc.) a hyperbole that has been used to refer to something as "great" or "the greatest of its kind", became a popular snowclone template in the 1990s. The phrase entered American popular culture in September 1990 at the outset of the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council warned the U.S.-led Coalition against military action in Kuwait with the statement: "Let everyone understand that this battle is going to become the mother of all battles."[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone#The_mother_of_all_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone#The_mother_of_all_X
- marc_abonce 3y agoI originally wanted to "correct" you because of the 1968 Mother of All Demos, but TIL it wasn't even given that name until 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos#Origin_of_nickname https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos#Origin...