Inspired by my own answer to How would deafening as punishment be carried out? at worldbuilding.se, I was thinking about the phrase "tin ear", meaning tone deaf, or (Collins) an inability to perceive differences in musical sounds. Merriam-Webster has a deafened or insensitive ear, which doesn't fit their example (My wife is a talented musician, but I have a tin ear) very well.
We've discussed the meaning before but not the etymology. There's some speculation at that last link about ear trumpets, and more here. Dictionary.com has a few historical records, but I can't find anything definitive.
So: Where does tin ear come from? Speculation I've seen includes:
- Ear trumpets made of tin (this would seem more logical if it just meant deaf)
- Tin (plate) as cheap and nasty
- Tin instruments or dropped items made of tin sounding horrible
- A tale of using a piece of tin on a morse buzzer to amplify the sound
- Tinnitus
Best Answer
The earliest record I can track of the use in print is in the novel Titan:A Romance, by Jean Paul Richter, published in translation from the German in 1863 and in the original language between 1800 and 1803.
Several sections of the text refer to a gentleman's frustration at the loss of his ear trumpet:
the saga continues later in the book
and continues...
From this it seems clear that the American translator, Charles Timothy Brooks, was comfortable with the idea that his readers would understand the varied references 'tin ear' to refer to the same device as 'ear'and ear-trumpet'. I have no german so I'm not able to go to the original text to see what liberties may or may not have been taken with the translation in that regard. If anyone else can compare texts I'd be happy to hear and incorporate the results.
Seeing @RaceYouAnytime's answer, I thought it might be worth exploring whether it is the case that while 'tin ears' were ear trumpets, not all ear trumpets were 'tin ears'.
It is quite easy to picture the very obvious ear trumpets which we have all seen in cartoons and comedies, but there were also designs for small, discreet devices and the more money you had the fancier they could be.
This example is from 1830 and is described as an 'Artificial concha'
This device called an Otophone, was designed to make the wearer's ear stick out and dates from 1860.
All of these are devices are 'worn in', rather than 'held to' the ear and I would speculate that it could be something of this nature which people were thinking of when giving the alternative name 'tin ear' to a cauliflower ear, particularly when considering the Titan reference to screwing in the device..