{"id":52766,"date":"2021-11-23T09:10:56","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T14:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=52766"},"modified":"2021-11-23T09:18:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T14:18:12","slug":"just-another-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=52766","title":{"rendered":"\"Just another day\""},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Gelman<\/a> sent a link to blog post (with a rather long title): \"Just another day at the sausage factory . . . It\u2019s just funny how regression discontinuity analyses routinely produce these ridiculous graphs and the authors and journals don\u2019t even seem to notice<\/a>\", with the note \"You might enjoy the statistics content in the main post, but I'm sending to you because of the phrase-origin discussion\".<\/p>\n

That discussion happened in a comment<\/a> asking about the origins of the phrase \"another day at the sausage factory\", and Andrew's response was<\/p>\n

I have no idea where the phrase comes from! I didn\u2019t even know it was a phrase, at least I don\u2019t think so. It derives from the saying that you don\u2019t want to see sausage or legislation being made . . . ummm, let\u2019s google *sausage legislation* . . . here\u2019s<\/u><\/a> Quote Investigator which is always my favorite source for this sort of thing. They cite Fred Shapiro who dug up the earliest known version: \u201cThe Daily Cleveland Herald, March 29, 1869, quoted lawyer-poet John Godfrey Saxe that \u2018Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made,\u2019 and this may be the true origin of the saying.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As to the exact phrase, \u201cJust another day at the sausage factory\u201d: maybe I read it somewhere and it lodged in my unconscious? A quick google turns it up in various places, for example this<\/u><\/a> news article by Steve Lopez in the Los Angeles Times. So my guess is that it\u2019s just a natural formulation that has been independently coined many times, derived from the well known saying about sausage and legislation.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don't have anything to add to Quote Investigator's story about sausages, but there's more to be said about \"Just another day\".<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The word sequence \"just another day\" occurs 474 times in the billion-word COCA corpus<\/a>, for a frequency of about 0.47 per million words. (As a point of comparison, the single word \"discontinuity\" occurs 684 times in the same dataset, and \"regression discontinuity\" occurs 22 times.)<\/p>\n

And most instances of \"just another day\" are intended to a describe a routine situation or event, which is often (but not always) negatively evaluated. A few examples from COCA:<\/p>\n

You have already seen, you've already been through the stress, and now, launch day is just another day.<\/span>
\nWhen it comes to adventure, my confidence level is much higher than most. What is objectively over-the-top seems like just another day.<\/span>
\nToday doesn't have to be just another day, so let yourself enjoy it and make it as unique as possible.<\/span>
\nYeah, just another day in the colorless world of corporate boredom. <\/span>
\nAnd life goes on and so does the traffic. Just another day in hell.<\/span>
\n[I]t seems that it is so common place for them to see death all around them all the time, or, a lot of the time it is, sadly, just another day.<\/span>
\nBut in the years since, Veterans Day has become, for some, just another day off or a day to hit the big sales at the mall.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the three-word sequence \"just another day\" has other possible interpretations, like \"just another day until vacation!\", there's definitely a \"just another day\" idiom for perhaps-tedious routine. The Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms<\/em><\/a> has<\/p>\n

just<\/span>\u00a0another<\/span>\u00a0day<\/span>\u00a0at the office<\/em>\u00a0boring routine.<\/p>\n

\n

1997<\/b>\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0Professional cricket has been reduced to\u00a0just<\/span>\u00a0another<\/span>\u00a0day<\/span>\u00a0at the \u2018office\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So what's the history? A bit of poking around suggests that it's been Out There since at least the mid 19th century, and that the \"at the office\" part is not essential.<\/p>\n

The earliest one I've found (from newspapers.com) occurs in a story by Mary Grosvenor, \"Tommy Lost and Found\", published in the Springville Journal & Herald<\/em>, December 31 1886<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

That passage suggests that the \"boring routine\" meaning was already routine by that time.<\/p>\n

Another example comes from the Neenah Daily Times<\/em>, March 31 1892:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The first example I found of \"Just another day at the office\" comes from the New York Daily News<\/em>, July 21 1927:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Gelman sent a link to blog post (with a rather long title): \"Just another day at the sausage factory . . . It\u2019s just funny how regression discontinuity analyses routinely produce these ridiculous graphs and the authors and journals don\u2019t even seem to notice\", with the note \"You might enjoy the statistics content in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-culture","category-words-words-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52766"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52777,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52766\/revisions\/52777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}