Part 1:
The origin of this anecdote isn’t what you think it is, and reading a couple of the early versions is instructive
Let’s just get this out of the way to start with: no, Winston Churchill likely never said this. At least, not as time has handed the anecdote down to us. Not in this phrasing, and not in the context most famously attributed to him.
Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the man who’s assiduously researched the issue. Here’s his first, rather brief, post on the matter. Here’s a longer version, with updated information and new citations. The linguist Geoffrey Pullam posted the original remarks to the Language Log. Ben Zimmer himself, linguist, lexicographer, and language columnist, posted the follow-up. (Yes, that Ben Zimmer. Whose brother is science writer Carl, by the way. No slouches in that family.)
The earliest version of the story (that Zimmer has been able to track down) appeared in The Strand Magazine in 1942, without any reference to Churchill, who was himself a frequent contributor to the magazine. There’s a government report. There’s the young pedant, objecting to a sentence ending on a preposition. There’s the famous retort.
It’s the story we know, sans Churchill.
If in this first citation, it had actually been Churchill who’d said of objection to his use of a trailing preposition that it was “offensive impertinence, up with which I will not put,” why would the magazine not have identified him? There would have been no reason not to.
But being a frequent contributor to the Strand, Churchill may well have seen the original story. And later borrowed from it.
In early 1944, a story was wired from London to both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times that has the prime minister castigating “a long rambling ‘minute’ on a minor subject” with the remark “This is the kind of tedious nonsense with which I will not put up.” The London correspondent notes that the prime minister “underscored ‘up’ heavily.”
So, no prepositions called out. And the idiomatic phrase has been only slightly flipped: it’s only the final preposition of the verb phrase that’s fronted (shifted to a position preceding the subject of the clause), not both the adverbial particle and the preposition.
As Zimmer notes, assuming this anecdote can be trusted, Churchill may have created his own variation on the original humorous mis-turn of phrase he’d originally read in another context. One ungrammatically fronted element may have felt like enough.
So much for the history.
Now onto the cautionary tale.
In that first story citing Churchill, which appeared in both the Tribune and the Times, there was one crucial distinction. In the Chicago Tribune version, the phrasing of the quote is consonant with the prime minister’s emphasis, which the correspondent calls the reader’s attention to at the end of the article. In the New York Times version, however, some overzealous copyeditor had edited the witticism back to the standard phrasing, spoiling the joke. (Further proof to support this reading: the story also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, in a version identical to the one in the Tribune — though the LA Times credited as their source the New York Times. The editing at the latter clearly happened after they received the story.)
But that’s not the only time the anecdote was botched.
Two years later, in 1946, the Los Angeles Times gets it wrong in another, even deeper way. It’s the canonical form of the phrase that’s circulating now — “up with which I will not put” — and the context has shifted back (as in the original anecdote, the one that precedes Churchill) to language, specifically prepositions. Though the story hadn’t entirely settled down to one version yet. How does the LA Times present the witty criticism? As a response on the part of Churchill to reading through a report filled with “circumlocution and trailing prepositions.”
So, precisely the opposite situation in which that witticism makes any sense.
Deliberately mangling a phrase natural to the language and torturing it into something ungrammatical makes the case for trailing prepositions. And castigates the practice of striving to avoid them.
In the first botched story, the copyeditor didn’t understand that the lexical permutation was deliberate. (But to be fair, the reference was elliptical. And language itself was not made the subject.) In the second, the editor didn’t get the import of the commentary, period. That’s a deeper disconnect.
As editors, we must strive not merely to uphold the rules. We must read with intelligence — and make sure that any work that passes through our hands goes out into the world the better for it.
Read Part 2.