I didn’t realize this phrase is controversial. TheFreeDictionary defines that phrase as rewards and punishments that influence someone’s behavior, and notes that a long thin carrot may be used because it looks like a stick.

But Boston.com calls this “one of the more vexing language standoffs of our time. Some people say the proper phrase is ‘carrot on a stick,’ meaning an incentive, a carrot dangled in front of a balky donkey. Others are sure it’s ‘carrot and stick,’ suggesting behavior modification by a combination of bribery and threat.”

The “bribery and threat” version is what I grew up with – in New York State – I wonder if the version differs regionally.

Boston.com found an early usage by Lydia Maria Child in 1846, in a widely reprinted story intended to show that children respond better to kindness than to whipping.

“‘I manage children pretty much as the man did the donkey,’ Child’s heroine tells her cranky neighbor, who scolds and beats the young servant girl they share. ‘Not an inch would the poor beast stir, for all his master’s beating and thumping. But a neighbor tied some fresh turnips to a stick, and fastened them so that they swung directly before the donkey’s nose.'”

And also this:

“A [cartoon] image appears in Edward P. Montague’s account of a US expedition to the Dead Sea, published in 1849… One rider is armed with a whip of ‘strong blackthorn twigs,’ which he applies to the animal; the other uses just the bunch of carrots tied to a stick, suspended in front of the donkey.”

Boston.com concludes that “instead of a true version and a mistaken one, then, we seem to have two separate phrases.” They referenced WorldWideWords.

I checked WorldWideWords myself. They report many languages have a version of the phrase, and say it “must have been kicking around informally in English for at least the last century.”

Donkeys are quite smart and have a sense of fair play. I doubt, in real life, a donkey would walk very far trying to eat a carrot that’s always out of reach. I suspect a continuous beating would get you kicked and bitten.

I’ll stick with my childhood version.

Reviewing the book The New Jim Crow made me wonder how this phrase originated.

“It is not clear how, but the minstrel character’s name ‘Jim Crow’ became a kind of shorthand for the laws, customs and etiquette that segregated and demeaned African Americans primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s.” ferris.edu

“The phrase ‘Jim Crow Law’ can be found as early as 1892 in the title of a New York Times article about voting laws in the South.” wikipedia It sounds like the term was already known to readers, so it seems to have originated colloquially, and no one knows who coined it.

In the 1800s, white performers donned “blackface” makeup for minstrel shows where they “played the roles of ignorant, lazy, joyous blacks. Audiences roared with laughter.”

Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a native of New York, was well known for blackface performances where he “acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English. In his Jim Crow persona, he also sang ‘Negro ditties’ such as ‘Jump Jim Crow’.” ferris.edu

Rice supposedly got his act from specific slaves he observed, even buying their clothes to use as his costume. black-face.com

That is, on any project, if too many people give orders, the project will fail. Searching for this phrase turns up many references to a short parody video. I tried my search by adding -parody -infomercial.

rollsoffthetongue notes variations such as “too many cooks spoil the… soup, broth, or stew.” They say “this is a very old saying or proverb that exists in many languages. In English, it dates back to at least the 16^th century when it first appeared in print,” but do not list the citation.

Phrase Finder lists the phrase as originating in another language but, alas, offers no details.

dictionary.reference.com agrees “it was already considered a proverb in 1575.”

RF_alum and I were discussing this phrase when I complained of contradictory comments in a critique of a novel I’m working on. On the plus side, if comments are contradictory I feel justified in doing whatever I want.