"Shame on you" is a common expression
- used to reprove someone for something of which they should be ashamed. (ODO)
Its usage as a set phrase appears to be from the beginning of the 19th century and has increased during recent decades according to Ngram:
Its construction and usage seem to be quite "unique", other similar intuitive expressions like 'happiness on you or love on you' for instance, do not appear to be common expressions.
How did it become a popular fixed expression? Was it part of a proverb or a longer saying of which only a part survived?
EDIT:
- Other interesting expressions suggested by users like 'good on you'(an Aussie colloquialism) and 'peace on you', do not appear to have the idiomatic common usage of 'shame on you'.
Best Answer
One thing that a Google Books search for early instances of "shame on X" reveals is how common the word shame is in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century works. Perhaps the connection of shame with original sin (having eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam sees that he is naked and is ashamed) makes it a particularly powerful term in religious discourse, or perhaps honor and shame provided the push and pull of personal motivation in English society at that time.
Shakespeare uses shame dozens of times in his plays (as Chaucer does in his Canterbury Tales two centuries earlier). But in Shakespeare, unlike in Chaucer, the form "shame on [or upon or against] X" appears several times. It seems that, at some point in the 200 years between Chaucer and Shakespeare, idiomatic use of this declarative form began to take hold, although "shame on X" appears not to have been firmly established as a set phrase even in Shakespeare's time.
Was 'cry shame on X' the original form of 'shame on X'?
The original expression from which we retain the truncated form "shame on X" may have been "cry shame on [or of or upon] X." At any rate there are many sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century instances of this phrase. From Thomas Harding, A Confutation of a Booke, intituled An Apologie of the Church of England (1565):
From John Martial, "A Replie to M. Calfhills Blasphemous Answer Against the Treatise of the Crosse" (1566) in English Recusant Literature, 1558–1640:
From Thomas Harding, A Detection of Sundrie Foul Errours (1568) [combined snippets]:
From The Tablette Booke of Ladye Mary Ketyes, Owne Sister to the Misfortunate Ladye Jane Dudlie (1577):
From a letter from William Davison to Sir Francis Walsingham (August 24, 1584), in Letters and Papers Relating to Patrick Master of Gray, Afterwards Seventh Lord Gray (1835):
From Matthew Sutcliffe, A Treatise of Ecclesiasticall Discipline (1591):
From Henry Barrow, A Plaine Refutation of Mr. George Giffarde's Reprochful Booke, Intituled, A Short Treatise against the Donatists of England (1591):
From The Warn-word of Sir Francis Hastinges Wast-word (1602):
From Stephen Bradwell, Mary Glovers Late Woefull Case (1603), in Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London: Edward Jorden and the Mary Glover Case (1991):
From William Shakespeare, Othello (1603), Emillia (Iago's wife) speaking:
From Nicholas Breton, Cornv-copiae. Pasquil's Night-cap: Or, Antidot for the Head-ache (1612):
From Robert Persons, A Discussion of the Answere of M. William Barlow, D. of Diuinity, to the Book intituled: The Iudgment of a Catholike Englishman liuing in banishment for his Religion &C. (1612):
From John Dod, "The Fifth Sermon," in Seven Godlie and Frvitfull Sermons (1614):
From Samuel Hieron, Penance for Sinne, or Davids Penitentiall Psalme Opened (1619):
From Edward Elton, An Exposition of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Colossians, second edition (1620):
And from William Whateley, A Bride-Bush; Or, A Direction for Married Persons (1623):
Incidentally, the expression "a crying shame" may also be bound up with the wording "cry shame on [or upon] X." The first instance of this expression in a Google Books search is from Clement Ellis, The Gentile Sinner; or, England's Brave Gentleman (1660):
Is "cry shame on X" the progenitor of "shame on X"? The Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Edition (1971) is not especially enlightening on this point. It identifies "shame on you" as the equivalent of such interjections as "you should be ashamed" and "fie for shame," and it finds instances of shame used in this sense going back to 1300—but all of the citations included beneath this definition involve the wording "for shame." Here is the OED's definition (13b), which is subordinate to its more general definition (13) of for shame:
At definition 16a of shame, the OED reaches "shame on [you]" directly:
But the earliest citation that the OED gives for the "shame to or on" subgroup of this definition is from Shakespeare's King John (1595) (quoted in the Shakespeare section of this answer, below), which is considerably later that the earliest instances of "shame on [or upon] X" that a Google Books search finds (and that I note elsewhere in this answer).
A third useful entry in the OED's coverage of shame involves the expression cry shame and appears as definition 16b:
The OED's earliest citation for this definition is from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1599) (also cited in the Shakespeare section of my answer, below), which is several decades later than the earliest Google Books matches for "cry shame," detailed above.
Instances of 'shame on [or upon] X' in Shakespeare
Shakespeare's plays appeared during a crucial, unsettled period in the evolution of "shame on X" as an idiomatic interjection of denunciation. Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, third edition (1902) cites several instances of "shame on X" or "shame upon X" in Shakespeare's work that appear to be echoing a recognized idiom:
Schmidt's references are to the following particular lines. From Richard II (1592), Hastings and Queen Margaret speaking:
From King John (ca. 1595), Queen Elinor speaking to Constance:
From Much Ado About Nothing (1599), Leonato speaking to Beatrice:
From Measure for Measure (1603), Duke Vincentio speaking:
Schmidt overlooks this match from Henry VI, Part 3 (1591), Warwick speaking:
In addition to all these instances from the 1623 Folio Shakespeare, we have the example from The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the Death of the Good Duke Humphrey (by 1594, a draft of or a reported text from a performance of Henry VI, Part 2 (1591)) that Tim Romano cites in a comment above:
There is obviously considerable variability in the wording Shakespeare uses to express a seemingly very similar core idea in each of these instances. This suggests to me that in Shakespeare's time the status of "shame on X" was not at all the set phrase it has since become.
Other early instances of 'shame on [or upon] X'
One very early instance of "shame on X" appears in Thomas Wyatt, "The louer excuseth him of wordes wherwith he was vniustly charged," in Tottel's Miscellany: Songes and Sonnettes (1557):
From Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Book !V (1596):
From George Wilkins, The Miseries of Inforst Marriage (1607):
From Thomas Heywood, The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange (1607):
From a 1610 translation by John Healey of St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God:
I have included these instances because they show "shame on [or upon] X" in early use without the leading verb cry. It is important to note that cry was sometimes omitted from "shame on X" even in the sixteenth century—most notably in the Spenser example from 1596, where including cry would seem to have been utterly in keeping with the usage of the time. The earlier example from Wyatt seems possibly relevant but I'm not confident that "shame on me" is being used there in the same way as in later instances of "shame on X."
Conclusions
The particular wording "shame on X" appears as early as 1565, in a screed by Thomas Harding, where Harding says "Now who so euer examineth the place truly, must nedes crye out shame on you Defender, who are thauctour." This is significant because it is also the earliest instance I've been able to find of the phrase "cry [out] shame."
Whether "shame on you" descended from the longer-form phrase "cry [out] shame on [or upon] you" is a matter for speculation, but the OED's treatment of shame is not incompatible with such a derivation. In my research, I was surprised and impressed at how many of the early (1620 and before) Google Books matches for "shame on [or upon] X" were also matches for "cry [out] shame."