Neither use nor ornament

Posted by Pamela May 28, 2006In reply to Neither use nor ornament posted by ESC on May 25, 2006

where does the phrase " Neither use nor ornament" come from?

I'm not sure that this is the source, but Edmund Burke did say 'Stonehendge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable', in 1756.

It's NOT Shakespeare or KJV. I did find Robert Louis Stevenson uses the exact phrase in his story The Beach of Falesa which I think is from the early 1890's but I bet that's not the source.

Related phrase: Men should either be decorative or useful. I don't know who said it first. But I like it.

Mary H. Kingsley "Travels in West Africa" also used the exact phrase at much the same time as Stevensen "wading neck deep in a swamp your revolver is neither use nor ornament until you have had time to clean it"