Re: Highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow
Posted by ESC on May 20, 2003 In Reply to: Lowbrow posted by Sax on May
20, 2003
: Hi! Can you please explain the origin and meaning of the word
"lowbrow?" Thank you, Sax
HIGHBROW/LOWBROW - "Dr. Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), founder
of the 'science' of phrenology, gave support to the old folk notion
that people with big foreheads have more brains." The theory, later
discredited, "led to the expression 'highbrow' for an intellectual,
which is first recorded in 1875.New York Sun reporter Will Irvin
popularized 'highbrow,' and its opposite 'lowbrow' in 1902, basing
his creation on the wrongful notion that people with high foreheads
have bigger brains and are more intelligent and intellectual than
those with low foreheads. At first the term was complimentary, but
'highbrow' came to be at best a neutral word .Life magazine coined
the term 'middlebrow' in the mid-1940s." From "Encyclopedia of Word
and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York,
1997).
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