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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Great link! Thanks. Here’s the relevant part of the link adamv is referring to, in which the writer is mocking people who “mistakenly” use the phrase “presidential timber”; I’ve smooshed it to make it fit into a block quote:
Most of this is old news for American readers, of course, but I wanted to point out a poll reported by the Chicago Sun-Times that says a full three-fifths of voters in Illinois “see him as presidential timber.â€
Presidential wood? Um, we had enough of that in the Clinton administration. The phrase is presidential timbre, people, like with a tuning fork, meaning that when you knock him against your knee the man rings out the right tones of leadership, responsibility, and vision. That describes Obama. But don’t go turning him into a falling tree. We want that image applied to a certain overgrown Bush in 2008.
“Hey, did you re-do your floors? Is that redwood? I thought that was illegal.â€
“Nope, it’s presidential timber. I got a palletload at Home Depot for cheap.â€
Perhaps Radio Free Mike labels the post “Decline of the English Language” because he’s intending to hasten that decline. Actually, though, as Adamv implies, this is just another case of an intelligent, literate, and thoughtful person committing an eggcorn. It’s not clear to me why using timber as a metaphor seems more unlikely to RFM than using the timbre of a tuning fork. After all, we also say that someone is “presidential material,” a metaphor very similar to the “timber” phrase.
Adamv showed pretty conclusively that “presidential timber” is the predominant choice of most writers today. I visited books.google.com, and I can now show that that has always been the case. The earliest instance of “presidential timber” I could find occurred in 1879. In the fifty year period between 1879 and 1929, there were 131 instances of “presidential timber.” But get this: I didn’t find a single instance of “presidential timbre” in that period. A few trickle in starting in the 1930s, but even today in 2006 there are only 24 instances of “timbre,” compared to 632 for “timbre.” Intelligent, literate, and thoughtful people can also be wrong when they defend an eggcorn as the standard form.
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adamv and pats – Presidential Timbre would be a musical metaphor, and it is marvelous. But this originally was a lumber metaphor, I am sure. It is an American pioneer sort of a thing. Please imagine the lumber scouts who spied out The Great North Woods, and reported back the best spots with the biggest trees. These people reported back to their Lumber Barons, and told them where the tallest, most magnificent, most profitable trees were. That was Presidential Timber.
That said, the idea of Presidential Timbre is extremely cool in this day and age. Does Mr. President G. W. Bush have “Presidential Timbe” when he speaks? Many people would answer in the negative. Many people might tell you that he has something such as petulant dropout cowboy-wannabee timbre. I myself, of course, remain neuclear on this question. This is strictly a linquistic issue, of course. The Eggcorn web site is far above politics.
Keep the idea of Presidential Timbre in mind for your next column on a Presidential speech.
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