The new use of the expression began in the 1960s and the earliest examples of its use are found in journalistic reports of the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War, in which several hundred civilians were murdered. The association with the blowing of whistles and the drawing of attention to a misdemeanour has now been extended into figurative use. More recently, football referees have also been called 'whistle blowers'. But the crowd of people were all willing to bet that McGinley was the champion whistle blower in America.ĭo You Know The Meanings of These Old Sayings? Quiet was restored upon the arrival of the regular police force, and ere the town clock had struck the midnight hour all had returned to their homes. An early example comes from the newspaper The Janesville Gazette, June 1883, in a story about a policeman who woke half the town in order to forestall a riot: The first profession to be labelled as 'whistle blowers' were the US police, who blew whistles to attract attention to wrongdoing. Sailors, when needing a wind to free a becalmed ship, would 'whistle for it'. Lots of people blew whistles hunters were said to ' whistle down the wind' when they let their falcons loose to fly. The expression 'whistle blower' was used literally well before it gained its current figurative meaning. Such folk may have been around for a long time but it is only recently that they have been given a name. 'Whistle-blowers' are people who attempt to draw their superiors' attention to something they believe to be wrong and, if they fail in that attempt and if they feel strongly enough about the matter, go public. Similar activities, for instance humming, produce a much shorter list. If the number of phrases that make direct reference to whistles is anything to go by, whistling looms large in the consciousness of the English-speaking peoples. What's the origin of the phrase 'Whistle-blower'? Whistle-blower What's the meaning of the phrase 'Whistle-blower'?Ī person who tries to raise the alarm about a problem and publicizes it inside and/or outside of his/her organization.
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