Talk:history repeats itself

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history repeats itself

Really only history + repeats + itself. No special, idiomatic or metaphoric meaning behind this entry. --The Evil IP address 18:04, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep. We have it as a proverb, and while there certainly exist metaphoric proverbs ("Don't count your chickens before they're hatched"), there's no reason to delete the transparent ones. —Ruakh_TALK 18:26, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Delete, I can think of no possible defence. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:37, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep as proverb per Ruakh, pending creation of WikiProverb or WikiPhrasebook or a proper phrasebook with criteria within Wiktionary. DCDuring TALK 14:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

keep sounds like a word to me.Gtroy 18:30, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep. It's one of those, "well you know what they say" type phrases. To use a different formulation (i.e. "history is repeated", "past events repeat themselves") would be incorrect. bd2412 T 19:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

But other forms do occur: "a case of history repeating itself" is very common. Equinox ◑ 19:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and not to mention the good old "just a little bit of history repeating", which gets 214,000 hits on Google. ---> Tooironic 23:25, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that "history repeating" is the most common form of this. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:29, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard that form. Maybe there's a U.S./U.K. difference here? —Ruakh_TALK 23:32, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

@Equinox: I believe those are allusions to the proverb. "She was counting her chickens" also exists, for example. I take BD2412 (talk • contribs) to be saying — correctly — that a different formulation of the proverb would be incorrect. —Ruakh_TALK 23:32, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Out of interest, why would this be a proverb? Mglovesfun (talk) 23:34, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

For one thing, it appears to anthropomorphize history. If the saying was merely that "history is repeated" it would be different, but "history repeats itself" suggests that history is an active force that drives events, rather than merely being the recordation of events. bd2412 T 00:43, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think repeats itself anthropomorphizes. Consider google books:"graph repeats itself", "pattern repeats itself".​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I have searched far and wide, and found no proverbial uses of either a graph or a pattern repeating itself. bd2412 T 03:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I think all transparent (SOP) proverbs should be deleted, so this one, too.​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree, delete. Our mission is to include every word, not every commonly used phrase. --Hekaheka 08:14, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Keep as a proverb per Ruakh and bd2412. Some probably irrelevant considerations: the phrase is very common, very short, and its reflexive construction ("... repeats itself") instead of passive one seems uncharacteristic for English. --Dan Polansky 19:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

kept -- Liliana • 07:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)