Sexist!
Tom Bevan wrote a post about Hillary Clinton possibly giving a concession speech tomorrow earlier today. He titled the post “Is The Fat Lady Clearing Her Throat?” Shortly later he had to come up with another title for he received lots of complaints from angry Clinton supporters who thought he was referring to their candidate as a “fat lady.”
Now, I’m not American, nor is English my native language, but even I understand that he was referring to the proverb: ‘it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.’
This proverb essentially means ‘that one shouldn’t assume the outcome of some activity (frequently a sports game) until it has actually finished.’ It ‘refers to the impression by many that at the end of every opera, an aria is sung by a heavy-set woman dressed like a valkyrie.’
It is commonly believed that writer/broadcaster Dan Cook coined the phrase ‘after the first basketball game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Washington Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) during the 1977-78 National Basketball Association playoffs, to illustrate that while the Spurs had won once, the series was not over yet’ (although it has also been attributed to baseball manager Earl Weaver).
He, in turn, didn’t mean that the wife of the manager of the Spurs was fatty. Nor that she would sing.
That belief, however, is incorrect, since it was already used in the Dallas Morning News on 10 March, 1976. Additionally it should be remarked that the proverb may very well originate from the American South for it appeared in a booklet titled “Southern Words and Sayings,” which indicates that it was a well known and popular proverb in the South for years already.
