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Turkey voting for christmas That was a new phrase for me. It seems to be chiefly British but the Wikipedia page suggest that the American alternative is "turke

by dfc 12y ago

Turkey voting for christmas That was a new phrase for me. It seems to be chiefly British but the Wikipedia page suggest that the American alternative is "turkey voting for thanksgiving." I searched google ngrams for "turkey[s] voting for christmas|thanksgiving" and it seems that the British variant is a relatively recent phenomena. NGrams has no results for the American variants. Is this a common phrase in the UK? Google NGrams result: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=turkey+voting+for+christmas%2Cturkeys+voting+for+christmas%2Cturkey+voting+for+thanksgiving%2Cturkeys+voting+for+thanksgiving&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=4&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cturkey%20voting%20for%20Christmas%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cturkeys%20voting%20for%20Christmas%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=turkey+voting+...

LeoPanthera 12y ago
The plural of anecdote is not data, but as a Brit, I am familiar with the phrase.
songshu 12y ago
From my life in Britain the phrase always brings to mind its usage in Parliament in 1979 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_vote_of_no_confidence_in_the_government_of_James_Callaghan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_vote_of_no_confidence_in_t...) which seems to have been the first time many of us encountered it.
- dfc 12y ago
  That explanation fits well with the n-grams results. Thank you.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  It comes from Callaghan's speech (as quoted in the article): "We can truly say that once the Leader of the Opposition discovered what the Liberals and the SNP would do, she found the courage of their convictions. So, tonight, the Conservative Party, which wants the Act repealed and opposes even devolution, will march through the Lobby with the SNP, which wants independence for Scotland, and with the Liberals, who want to keep the Act. What a massive display of unsullied principle! The minority parties have walked into a trap. If they win, there will be a general election. I am told that the current joke going around the House is that it is the first time in recorded history that turkeys have been known to vote for an early Christmas."

by dfc 12y ago

LeoPanthera 12y ago

The plural of anecdote is not data, but as a Brit, I am familiar with the phrase.

songshu 12y ago

From my life in Britain the phrase always brings to mind its usage in Parliament in 1979 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_vote_of_no_confidence_in_the_government_of_James_Callaghan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_vote_of_no_confidence_in_t...) which seems to have been the first time many of us encountered it.

dfc 12y ago
That explanation fits well with the n-grams results. Thank you.
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
It comes from Callaghan's speech (as quoted in the article): "We can truly say that once the Leader of the Opposition discovered what the Liberals and the SNP would do, she found the courage of their convictions. So, tonight, the Conservative Party, which wants the Act repealed and opposes even devolution, will march through the Lobby with the SNP, which wants independence for Scotland, and with the Liberals, who want to keep the Act. What a massive display of unsullied principle! The minority parties have walked into a trap. If they win, there will be a general election. I am told that the current joke going around the House is that it is the first time in recorded history that turkeys have been known to vote for an early Christmas."