Can someone explain the historical background behind this phrase with context to its usage today? There are several versions of etymology, so which version is most widely accepted? I came across this phrase in Act 3, Scene 2 of the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare where Portia says 'Let music sound while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan like end'
Learn English – Etymology of ‘swan song’
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Best Answer
The OED says it's "after German schwanen(ge)sang, schwanenlied".
Being the OED, they're probably right. They give the meaning as:
"swan, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2014. Web. 24 November 2014.
Michael Quinion goes into more detail on World Wide Words:
World Wide Words: Swan Song
Michael has written a number of books on the English language for Oxford University Press and Penguin, and is an adviser for the OED. I'd put quite a lot of faith in his website.
Although MQ is likely to be right about the etymology, he may be wrong when he says that the legend itself is 'all nonsense'. Although the mute swan (which is the kind of swan that is most common in Europe) definitely does not make any special vocalisations as it dies, the noisy Whooper Swan (C. cygnus cygnus or cygnus musicus or Olor cygnus) aka 'whistling swan' may do so; see Bryan P. Martin, Wildfowl of the British Isles and North-West Europe, for further info on the swan itself.
Here is what purports to be an eye-witness account of a 'stricken' swan's song:
H. W. Robinson, quoted in:
D'Arcy Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds (London and Oxford 1936), p.183, cited in:
Amber, Avallon, and Apollo's Singing Swan
Frederick M. Ahl
The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 103, No. 4 (Winter, 1982), pp. 373-411
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Article DOI: 10.2307/294518
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294518
The classicist W. Geoffrey Arnott goes into more detail:
Swan Songs
W. Geoffrey Arnott
Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Oct., 1977), pp. 149-153
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/642700
(emphasis mine)
Arnott adds:
(One should perhaps note that as a mid-20th-century British classicist, Arnott may have something of a vested interest in supporting Plato over the "Greece, parent of all falsehood" view).
For more info see:
Daniel Elliott, "plaintive and musical song", is quoted in Swans of the World, Sylvia Bruce Wilmore, Taplinger Pub. Co., 1979, p.129. ISBN 9780800875237.
"wailing, flutelike sound": Practical Handbook of British Birds, Witherby, 1919. This quote from 1940 edition, iii.169.
Zoographia rosso-asiatica, Pallas, 1831 (on Google Books but written in Latin).