Anyone Know Who Coined the Phrase "Death by a Thousand Small Cuts"

[SteveMetz]

This paper is from 1988.

Check page 19 here.

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]

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]

Steve,

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

[zenpundit]

From Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

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]

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?