The oxymoron-flavored punchline of today’s Zippy strip:
(#1) “Frivolity is a stern taskmaster”: it had the feel of a play on some existing quotation, so I searched on “stern taskmaster” — only to discover that frivolity is a stern taskmaster is indeed a famous quotation, widely attributed (without specific source) to … Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead!
At first, I hoped that one of the trackers of quotation sources — especially the Quote Investigator – would have taken this one on, but no luck there, so it was on to a long and tedious search through the Zippy archives. From which I emerged with an apparent winner, in a 2008 strip (though there was a 2003 strip with Jack Kerouac is a stern taskmaster in it; and a 2023 strip entitled “Stern Taskmaster” — both of which I’ll show you).
Then some investigation of stern taskmaster, which turns out to be a common collocation, one of the big three Adj collocations with the N taskmaster: hard, tough, and stern. Not (yet) fixed expressions — catchphrases, slogans, or even idioms — but something more than the fresh combinations of Adj and N into nominal phrases, approaching stock expressions.
The now-famous oxymoron-flavored catchphrase: where from? My current candidate for its first appearance:
(#2) The Zippy strip of 1/1/08, in which the phrase is uttered by Little Zippy, as he learns the ways of frivolity
An earlier stern taskmaster. Not frivolity, but Jack Kerouac, the beat writer:
(#3) Now uttered by the mature Zippy, in the strip of 7/18/03
I’m not sure how Kerouac, Coney Island hot dogs, and the leaning tower of Pisa (the pizza is a joke) are connected, though Kerouac’s summer alone in a fire tower might have something to do with it (but Zippy strips are often built on inspired absurdities). Meanwhile, Bill Griffith managed to get in a reference to Kerouac’s On the Road.
“Stern Taskmaster” as a title. Of a 2023 strip, set in a hellish amusement park:
(#4) The strip of 8/14/23, at (Bill Griffith’s conception of) the entrance to Luna Park in Sydney NSW (featured in other Zippy strips, where it’s clearly identified)
In the first panel, Zippy asks whether this is the gateway to fun, frivolity, amusements, etc. The monstrous gatekeeper assents, but he is indeed a stern taskmaster, requiring that Zippy abandon his childish love of frivolous fun to learn, shudder, new ways inside the Gates of Fun.
The phrase stern taskmaster. On the head N in this nominal phrase, from NOAD:
[compound] noun taskmaster: a person who imposes a harsh or onerous workload on someone: he was a hard taskmaster. [AZ: the original sense, still available today, was merely someone who assigns workloads; most commonly these days, the word has NOAD‘s specialized usage, in which the workload is unpleasant or burdensome]
(now spelled solid, but OED2 has earlier occurrences in which it’s hyphenated, as task-master.)
NOAD gives one example, in which the head N is modified by the Adj hard. Most occurrences of the N are in fact modified, since the point of mentioning a taskmaster is usually to provide information about this person (usually, in fact, to take note of their toughness). So it is with the Britannica Dictionary:
[compound] noun taskmaster: a person who assigns work to other people: He’s a hard / tough / stern taskmaster. [AZ: only the older, more general]
Now, in Britannica, with three alternative Adj modifiers. Not a random assortment; the head N taskmaster combines with lots of modifiers — relentless, harsh, demanding, strict, difficult (from various dictionaries) — but with these three with such frequency that they function as common collocations, conventionally associated to a degree that brings them very close to stock expressions; in any case, expressions that we come up easily with, getting them “off the shelf”, so to speak.
So stern taskmaster was right to hand when Zippy need le mot juste.
September 16, 2024 at 1:53 pm |
I’m not sure why you didn’t find the phrase originator. Admiral Nimitz said “The sea, like life itself, is a stern taskmaster.” Griffiths and others are just playing off of that famous quote.
September 16, 2024 at 2:25 pm |
At first, I thought that I found no originator because I did a net search. But now I have consulted two big dictionaries of quotations, neither of which has a stern taskmaster quote, from anyone. Admiral Nimitz might indeed have said that, but apparently he was just using a common collocation, not coining a memorable phrase; and his use wasn’t then cited by others.