ivory tower

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English

WOTD – 7 November 2006
 ivory tower on Wikipedia

Etymology

Calque of French tour d’ivoire, based on a biblical phrase,[1] coined by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve to compare the poet Alfred de Vigny (more isolated) with Victor Hugo (more socially engaged).[2][3]

First attested in English in a translation of Laughter by French philosopher Henri Bergson (1911).[4][2][5] The term was popularized in The Ivory Tower (1917) by Henry James,[2] though used in different sense (millionaires, not professors).

Pronunciation

Noun

ivory tower (plural ivory towers)

  1. (idiomatic) A sheltered, overly-academic existence or perspective, implying a disconnection or lack of awareness of reality or practical considerations.
    Such a proposal looks fine from an ivory tower, but it could never work in real life.
    • 2005, Daniel Walker, Valedictory speech for Hamilton College:
      Hamilton College is an ivory tower with an open bar, and so I - who work and play equally hard - have come to love this place, and have been dead-set against leaving it.
    • 2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist‎[1], volume 408, number 8845:
      Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

ivory tower (comparative more ivory tower, superlative most ivory tower)

  1. Separated from reality and practical matters; overly academic.
    • 1968, New Library World, volumes 69-70, page 8:
      The majority of librarians appear to have shown a very ivory tower approach to the application of all types of management technique to librarianship.
    • 1995, Hearings relating to Madison Guaranty S&L and the Whitewater Development Corporation, Washington, DC phase, page 504:
      I must say that, with all due respect, I think that's a very ivory tower approach.
    • 2007, Joan Gorham, Annual Editions: Mass Media 07/08, page 158:
      Bob Woodruff, an anchor and correspondent for ABC News who arrived in New Orleans the Wednesday after the storm hit, calls the detached-observer ideal "a very ivory tower notion that's not practiced in the field."
    • 2004, Geoffrey Kabaservice, The Guardians, page 154:
      Griswold was perhaps the most ivory tower president of Yale in the twentieth century, and in many ways the university turned toward conservatism in the decade after his inauguration, in 1950.

See also

References

  1. ^ The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], 1611, →OCLC, Song of Solomon 7:4: “Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; […]”
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 “ivory tower”, Wordorigins.org, Dave Wilton, Saturday, July 08, 2006.
  3. ^ Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1837) “Pensés d’Août [Thoughts of August]”, in Poésies complètes de Sainte-Beuve (in French), Charpentier et Cie, published 1869, page 374: “Et Vigny, plus secret, / Comme en sa tour d’ivoire, avant midi rentrait. ― And Vigny, more discreet, / As if in his ivory tower, retired before noon.”
  4. ^ Henri Bergson (1911) chapter III, in Frederick Rothwell, Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton, transl., Laughter, page 135: “Each member must be ever attentive to his social surroundings; he must model himself on his environment; in short, he must avoid shutting himself up in his own peculiar character as a philosopher in his ivory tower.”
  5. ^ Gary Martin (1997–) “Ivory tower”, in The Phrase Finder, retrieved 26 February 2017.
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