A New Word!

Here is a little nugget of joy for me: I have a new word for my Vocabulary List: Hobson's choice. (OK, full disclosure: I use my Vocab List for phrases, too....) Have you ever heard that one before? Me neither. I love finding a new specimen for my collection! (yeah, go ahead and laugh - or yawn) I stumbled across it in an article on legislation for pharmacies. Go figure. Anyway, it means "an apparently free choice which is really no choice at all; a free choice in which only one option is offered. The choice is therefore between taking the option or not taking it."

Hobson's choice is different from a true choice between two (or more) equally disagreeable or agreeable options; blackmail (do something, or have some unpleasant fact about your past revealed); extortion (do something or suffer unpleasant consequences of some other sort) a Catch-22 situation, where both (or all) choices available actually cancel each other out.

Hobson's choice originated from Thomas Hobson (1545-1631), a livery stable owner who rented horses in Cambridge, England, mainly to the university students there. In order to rotate the use of his horses, he offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door—or taking none at all.

The first known written usage of this phrase is in 1712, though it also appears in Thomas Ward's 1688 poem "England's Reformation", not published until after Ward's death. Ward wrote, "Where to elect there is but one, / 'Tis Hobson's choice—take that, or none."

Oh, the glee of finding some new linguistic gem! It's safely tucked away, waiting for me to find a time and place to try it out. You have been warned. *grins*