Continuing the discussion from Sharpee - v1.0.0-alpha.1:
Does it, though?
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To me at least, the “test of time” is the idea that time itself tests how good or useful something is—better things will endure, worse things will be forgotten. So if something “stands the test of time”, that’s saying its endurance is a point in its favor.
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I defer to the linguist, then.
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Oh, don’t defer to me on this one—words and phrases mean what people use them to mean, so all native English-speakers get a say here!
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Ah, because I’m genuinely not being a pedant when I say that for my whole life, “standing the test of time” never had anything to do with quality, and just had to do with resistance against death. Something can be incompetent, but if it’s not incompetent enough to die immediately, then it’s successfully standing the test of time, even if it’s awful.
There can be a terrible movie or harmful tradition or useless organ, but if nothing actively phases it out, then it sticks around.
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I wouldn’t say “over and above just being still used” but for me the idiom definitely has the sense of there being a value to it having endured – maybe a sense of “it has lasted enough time that if it were awful it would have died by now”?
But for me it pre-dates the really widespread intentional use of shady tactics to make sure the thing that benefits you sticks around even if it’s terrible. So I’m not sure it’s an idiom I’d use much these days?
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It seems most dictionaries include the notion of value over a period of time.
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The problem is that the phrase is a “suitcase phrase,” meaning it needs to be unpacked. And how it has been unpacked has differed. The idiom traditionally meant that something endures and really nothing more than that. The idea was fundamentally about survival. Whether that be physical (a building), cultural (a practice), or functional (a tool), the idiom was neutral regarding moral or aesthetic judgment.
We know (linguistically) that there’s been a natural semantic shift at work since the early 1800s. Over time, people have tended to attach positive connotations to what endures. It’s not hard to see the rationale of this shift, right? If something is still around after a long while, we at least might have good reason to assume it must have been good, valuable, or worthy in some intrinsic way.
Yet … because there’s always nuance … something can endure across time and be very much negative in its effect or its influence. Racism is a good (if charged) example. I think we can all agree that racism has “stood the test of time” in the sense that it has persisted through centuries, but the sane among us would never want to imply that this endurance makes it “good” or “worthy.”
What this shows is that humans tend to moralize endurance. If something’s been around for centuries, we assume it must have endured for a reason, whether that reason by positive or negative. Over time, the idiom tended towards becoming a natural rhetorical vehicle for praising what endures rather than condemning it.
If you really want to dig in, this goes back a ways. A quick search using Ngram Viewer shows that in 1843, Alfred Smee, describing a battery, said: “it has fully stood the test of time.” Note that the sense is literal performance over years, not praise for taste or timeless beauty. A 1891 newspaper ad said the following: “Cheatham’s Tasteless Chill Tonic has stood the test of time and proven itself worthy.” Here, durability slides into an endorsement. A 1920 building materials ad says: “Crushed Stone which will stand the test of time and the elements.” Still about endurance, but clearly a value proposition. The book “Records Administration and the War” by Emmett J. Leahy, from 1942, describes microfilm as “the only form of insurance that will stand the test of time.” Here, longevity clearly is meant to imply reliability.
I kind of think of this idiom like the word “classic.” At root, “classic” just meant “first class / standard,” which was neutral. Over time, we almost only use it in a praiseworthy way: a “classic novel,” a “classic performance,” whatever. You can call something a “classic blunder” (clearly a negative), but that stands out as an intentional twist. We see the same thing with “stands the test of time.” The trajectory is early neutral, with a positive drift by association, to being dominant positive today. Any negative uses tend to be exceptions, usually rhetorical or ironic in nature.
(And, yes, this is why I don’t get invited to parties.)
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Some see longevity as a virtue, others only as a single attribute, separate and irrelevant to quality or worthiness.
I think it depends more on what the subject is and who you ask.
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Bland parties, then. This is reason enough to invite you to one of mine.
…though that would require I attended parties at all, of course.
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For me, the phrase seems to suggest resonance with the present era after a significant passage of time, but not necessarily quality.
The novel Wolf Solent strikes me as a good example. It’s a very fine book. It could even be called a masterpiece. But it does not resonate much, in my opinion. It feels destined to gather dust on a neglected bookshelf, even though it is still available, even though I can still read it right now, even though it has survived. But it has not stood the test of time.
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I’m just glad I don’t have to sit the test of time.
-Wade
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Yeah that’s how I think of it as well. With the possible and unnecessary elaboration that in the interim, it may have been considered to have stood the test of time, or not, at any or all points between the origin and now.
-Wade
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