Jury is still out

[fredpuli47]

When and where did the expression 'the jury is still out', meaning 'the outcome is uncertain' , first come into use?

[squarebear]

I assume it refers to court proceedings where the jury leave the room to make their decision.

[Quizmonster]

You - of all people - ASK this question, Fred?! I should have thought you were a shoo-in to ANSWER it! The OED doesn't refer to this non-legal usage.

[fredpuli47]

QM, no barrister ever said it . Far too busy taking sweepstake bets on the time when the jury would return to give their verdict or wondering what the jury's questions meant or trying to establish when the judge would accept a majority verdict, to say anything as mundane and unnecessary as that !

It has to be a layman's saying and I suspect it's American . [But not as painful to me as someone British saying 'on the stand' for 'in the box', which I heard a local TV reporter say here recently !' ]

[Quizmonster]

Fred, I don't know why - age, presumably - I constantly forget to check the online version of the OED, but I just did that. This very year they added an example from the Chicago Sun Tribune in 1949: "The jury is still out in the case of TV against athletics."
As far as the UK is concerned, The Times had a reference in 1984 to a company's potential to become a high-growth business, a matter upon which "the jury was still out."
So, it would seem that it is at least 60 years old.

[fredpuli47]

Thanks, QM. My suspicion is confirmed!

[mallam]

fred, while someone British saying 'on the stand' for 'in the box' is indeed toe-curling. What is your objection to the non-legal use of 'the jury is still out'?

[fredpuli47]

I've no objection to it, mallam.

[mallam]

Not even a teeny bit of distaste for it, fred? It appears to cause you some degree of pain:

"It has to be a layman's saying and I suspect it's American . [But not as painful to me as someone British saying 'on the stand' "

We do try not to find everything American painful, but we all fail miserably, don't we? For as Ogden Nash has us saying, "We are, we Are. /You admit we are /Superior."

[fredpuli47]

Mallam, I don't like ubiquitous cliche, that's all. That's 'the jury is still out'. ''At the end of the day' is another.They are 'painful', the more so when they are quite recent and the speaker seems to think them novel and fresh. The misuse of 'stand' for witness-box was painful for another reason, that the reporter should be aware that we don't have a 'stand' in British courts.

[Quizmonster]

I know you're not 'accusing' the phrase 'at the end of the day' - meaning eventually/in the final analysis sense - of being an Americanism, Fred, but that HAS happened on AnswerBank before. Purely as a matter of interest, it isn't, having taken root in British English in the 70s with no apparent US parentage. As already mentioned, it isn't always the Yanks' fault! Whatever...used mindlessly it can be painful, as you say.

[mallam]

Agreed, fred. And let's hear it for the box! And for the rigours of the endangered box pe for that matter.

And QM, thanx for confirming my worst suspicions: British English in the 70s with no apparent US parentage. But was it ever, or is it ever, NOT used mindlessly?

[mallam]

That's box pew, fred.