etymology - "Never say die?"


What's the deal with this idiom? I know what it means, but cannot wrap my head around its grammar structure. The sentence structure of



"Never say die"



looks like that of



"Never admit defeat"



but it does not make the same grammatical+semantical sense.


Is it an archaic use? Is it a contraction of a longer phrase? Was it originally misspoken by someone of note and survived memetically? What are its roots?


Edit: Well, the comments made me realize that I worded my question poorly. I'm not saying I think this phrase is ungrammatical. I'm asking how the heck "saying 'die'" came to mean what it means.



Answer



The expression "never say die" has been around since at least the early 1800s, but I think OP is attempting to over-analyse the grammar.


It just means don't use the word "die" (as in "We're all going to die!") because that would imply you've given up hope, which might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's much the same as "Where there's life there's hope"



As @Edwin comments, there's also Never say never. Add to that a couple of thousand written instances of Never say can't (and a couple of dozen Never say hopeless, for example) and I think one could reasonably say this is a "productive" construction even today.


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