Word of the Day: Movers and Shakers and Music Makers

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Word of the Day: Movers and Shakers and Music Makers

Monday, June 29th, 2009 | A&E, Word of the Day |

For Willy Wonka fans: note the first two lines of the poem, which is what Wonka said to Veruca Salt after she declared “Snozberries? Who ever heard of a snozberry?”

From Phrases.org.uk:

Music Makers
People of energetic demeanour, who initiate change and influence events.

Origin
The expression ‘movers and shakers’ is now most often applied to the rich and powerful in politics and business. In a year (2009) in which the movers and shakers of the financial world brought us to the brink of ruin, it is worth a thought as to who the original movers and shakers were.

The public perception of the term began after the first performance of Sir Edward Elgar’s popular choral work The Music Makers, at the Birmingham Festival in October 1912. The work is a setting of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s 1874 poem ‘Ode’, from his Music and Moonlight collection. In that poem, which singles out poets and musicians as the bards that guide lay thinking, O’Shaughnessy coined the phrase ‘movers and shakers’:

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.