Etymology
The first use of the term brain trust was in 1899 when it appeared in the Marion (Ohio) Daily Star: "Since everything else is tending to trusts, why not a brain trust?" This sense was referring to the era of trust-busting, a popular political slogan and objective of the time that helped spur the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and was later a key policy of President Theodore Roosevelt's administration. The term appears to have not been used again until 1928, when Time magazine ran a headline on a meeting of the American Council on Learned Societies titled "Brain Trust."
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Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)