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View Full Version : Anyone Know Who Coined the Phrase "Death by a Thousand Small Cuts"


SteveMetz
11-28-2007, 10:48 PM
It actually sounds like a former girl friend of mine but I suspect its origin lies elsewhere.
Rob Thornton
11-28-2007, 10:51 PM
for the low hanging fruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_slicing).
SteveMetz
11-28-2007, 11:02 PM
for the low hanging fruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_slicing).

I wasn't specific. I meant who described Soviet support for insurgencies as a strategic variant of it.
RTK
11-28-2007, 11:50 PM
This paper is from 1988.

Check page 19 here (http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/drew.pdf).
SteveMetz
11-29-2007, 12:23 AM
This paper is from 1988.

Check page 19 here (http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/drew.pdf).

I read Denny's paper when it first came out, but I'm pretty sure the phrase originated with French strategic theorists in the 1950s.
Sarajevo071
11-29-2007, 01:33 AM
There was an old Chinese torture called Ling chi, a death by a thousand cuts. The cuts are all small, but in the end the person dies...


Slow slicing (simplified Chinese: 凌迟; traditional Chinese: 凌遲; pinyin: língchí, alternately transliterated Ling Chi or Leng T'che), also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by/of a thousand cuts, is a form of execution used in China from roughly AD 900 to its abolition in 1905. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.

This method of execution became a fixture in the image of China among some Westerners. It appears in various romantic accounts of Chinese cruelty, such as Harold Lamb's 1930s biography of Genghis Khan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_slicing
Danny
11-29-2007, 06:05 AM
Steve,

Dude. I'm sorry about your girlfriend and you ... sounds bad.
zenpundit
11-29-2007, 06:06 PM
From Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (http://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Caesars-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140440720)

On Caligula:

"The method of execution that he preferred was to inflict numerous small wounds and his familiar order was 'make him feel that he is dying' "
Tom Odom
11-29-2007, 06:22 PM
It actually sounds like a former girl friend of mine but I suspect its origin lies elsewhere.


Steve, Dude. I'm sorry about your girlfriend and you ... sounds bad.



On Caligula:

Steve, you dated Caligula?