Was Winston Churchill's contribution to World War 2 positive or negative?

Many sources – including the venerable BBC – suggest that the phrase “business as usual” was created by Winston Churchill. I love the BBC, but it’s wrong about that. The phrase “business as usual” can be found in newspaper articles dating back to the early 1800s (as I’ve confirmed by searches in the great online resource, NewspaperArchive.com).

But Churchill did give the phrase a famous new political meaning during World War I. “The British people have taken for themselves this motto – ‘Business carried on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe. Churchill’s quote was remembered and reused in the same spirit during World War II.

In 1940 and 1941, when German planes were making devastating nightly bombing raids on London, shopkeepers put notices on their bombed shops that said “Business as Usual.” These signs were both a message of defiance and inspiration, echoing the intent of Churchill’s original speech. The following year, the phrase was used with a negative meaning by civil rights leader, Martin Luther King.

Today, “business as usual” is heard in both a positive and a negative sense, depending on the context. You can either be happy that something is back to “business as usual” – or unhappy that it’s stuck in some boring or bad “business as usual” rut. Linguistically, that’s not usual.

NOTE: If you’re interested in the origins of famous quotations and phrases, check out my Quotation Bookstore.