The Grammar Grump Rides Hobson’s Choice to Victory

While simultaneously watching The Hour on BBC America last night and reading Nina Burleigh’s The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox, I heard one of the characters on The Hour refer to a choice between two unpleasant alternatives as a “Hobson’s choice.”

“Bloody hell,” I muttered. “That’s not a Hobson’s choice. It’s a Morton’s fork. You’d expect the Brits to get it right. They invented the Hobson’s choice.”

If you are guilty of misusing “Hobson’s choice” or if you think Morton’s fork is something used to tune a lute, you’ve stumbled into the right tutorial, so listen up.

Thomas Hobson (1544-1631) was a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. Anyone who visited his stable looking to rent a horse was given two choices: the horse nearest the stable door or no horse at all. (Keen students of language will recognize the expression “Take it or leave it, tool” as the American equivalent of Hobson’s choice.)

To sum up, then: a Hobson’s choice is not a choice but an ultimatum.

I don’t pretend to know how the meaning of Hobson’s choice was bastardized. Perhaps it was ridden hard and put away wet. Unfortunately merde happens, and it frequently happens where language is concerned.

Now about Morton’s fork: John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late fifteenth century, believed that anyone living modestly had to be saving money and thus could afford to pay more taxes, whereas people living high off the hogwash were obviously rich and could also afford to pay more taxes. The principle of Morton’s fork is often misapplied today by conservative politicians in this country who cite its first provision while ignoring its second.

Well, that’s all the time The Grammar Grump has today, boys and girls. He needs to go out to see if there are any rabbits in the leg-hold traps he put in his garden last night, but he’ll be back soon with another opportunity for you to find out how wretched your “command” of English really is.