Sometimes I find idioms on the tip of my tongue but find myself unwilling to use them because I really don’t know where they came from. My usage of it may violate the spirit of the colloquialism and be nothing more than the prattle of a fool.
So, when I came upon the phrase “The Sweet Science” on the cover of the latest issue of Wired, it simply begged the question.
Here’s what I’ve found so far. From “The Sweet Science of Stories” by Jon Christensen:
“A boxer, like a writer, must stand alone,” wrote A.J. Liebling, a heavyweight of literary journalism, in The Sweet Science, a collection of his boxing pieces for The New Yorker from the 1950s.
The phrase “the sweet science of boxing” was popularized by Liebling. He got it from Pierce Egan’s Boxiana, a collection of articles about boxing in England in the 1700s. Egan called boxing “The Sweet Science of Bruising.”
And from Wikipedia:
By 1812, [Egan] had established himself as the country’s leading “reporter of sporting events,” which at the time meant mainly prize-fights and horse-races. The result of these reports, which won him a countrywide reputation for wit and sporting knowledge, appeared in the four volumes of Boxiana, or, Sketches of Modern Pugilism, which appeared, lavishly illustrated, between 1818-1824. It was Egan who first defined boxing as the sweet science.
So, Liebling got it from Egan who coined the phrase in the early 1800s. Still doesn’t answer my question, though it does make me wonder about Egan’s possible S&M proclivities.
The year was 1984. I was 16, an automotive innocent, a child of the double-nickel. Having been one of those kids who, by virtue of their birthday, ended up being one of the youngest in their grade, I could only watch as my closest friends got their licenses up to nine months before I could. But now—with the formalities of learner’s permits and driving tests successfully dealt with—it was my turn. I joined the ranks of the wannabe fast and furious.
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