Origins of the phrase "Speak of the devil"?

Question

Does anyone know where the phrase "Speak of the devil" might have originated. As in saying it when you were talking about someone and they walked into the room. My thought was maybe that people use to think that there was a taboo on the word devil and that if you said it he would appear. Anyone actually know?

Answer 1

The phrase is an abbreviation of English proverb, "Speak of the Devil and he shall appear." Deriving from the Middle Ages, this proverb (which was, and to a certain extent still is, rendered as "Talk of the Devil...") was a superstitious prohibition against speaking directly of the Devil or of evil in general, which was considered to incite that party to appear, generally with unfortunate consequences. Its first printed usage in modern English can be found in Giovanni Torriano's Piazza Universale (1666), as "The English say, Talk of the Devil, and he's presently at your elbow."



The phrase lost its overt message during the 19th century, during which it became a warning against eavesdroppers ("No good of himself does a listener hear,/Speak of the devil he's sure to appear"), and by the 20th century had taken on its present meaning.

Answer 2

Short for "Speak of the devil and he shall appear" which can be traced back to “Talk of the Devil, and he’s presently at your elbow” attested in 1666. So it is quite old.

Answer 3

it appears that evidently in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra of 1606, contained in the speech on the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar: “My salad days, even as i replaced into eco-friendly in judgment”. So the word got here to recommend “a era of youthful inexperience or indiscretion”, even though it in reality became well-known from the middle of the 19th century on. The link right here's eco-friendly, which had already had a which ability for some centuries a minimum of before Shakespeare’s day of someone youthful, similar to the more youthful eco-friendly shoots of spring, and also of someone who replaced into as yet eco-friendly or immature. by the way, for Shakespeare a salad wasn’t merely lettuce with some dressing, yet a much more desirable complicated dish of chopped, blended and pro vegetables (its call comes from the Latin note for salt); the note replaced into extensively utilized for any vegetable that would nicely be lined in that dish. although, Jan Freeman said in a unmarried of her note columns for the Boston Globe back in April 2001 that the expression has shifted experience contained in the US contained in the previous 20 years or so. It now frequently refers to a era contained in the previous even as someone replaced into on the height of their knowledge or earning skill, of their heyday, not inevitably even as they were youthful. The shift isn’t so not uncomplicated to comprehend once you imagine how few human beings really understand their Shakespeare.