Idioms encode folk judgments about people who claim credit for others’ labor.

Evidence

In Italian che fanno le mosche cocchiere , an allusion to La Fontaine’s fable Le Coche et la Mouche , which recounts the story ofaflywho thinks that it is due to his efforts that a coach drawn by six horses succeeds in ascending a steep hill; the poem ends: “Ainsi certaines gens, faisant les empresses, S’introduisent dans les affaires: lis font partout les necessaires, Et, partout importuns, devraient etre chasses.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2274

Categorization

• DEFINE: Glosses the Italian idiom ‘fare le mosche cocchiere’ via La Fontaine’s fable of the fly that believes it pulled the coach uphill.
• SHARE: A niche etymology-and-fable pairing for someone who collects untranslatable idioms and their literary sources.
• XREF: connects to: People overclaim credit for joint work because their own actions are most salient — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2577; Authorial attribution functions as a gendered economy of credit — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 693; Labor is purposive imagination realized in matter, giving workers authorship over process — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 141 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: People overclaim credit for joint work because their own actions are most salient — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2577; Authorial attribution functions as a gendered economy of credit — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 693; Labor is purposive imagination realized in matter, giving workers authorship over process — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 141 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Labor is purposive imagination realized in matter, giving workers authorship over process #complicates (0.74) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 141