Should 'Silver Bullet' Be Shot? by Rob Kyff on Creators.com

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Should 'Silver Bullet' Be Shot?

More and more people are using the term "silver bullet" when they mean "magic bullet," and Brad Conway of East Hampton, Conn., wants them to stop it. "Perhaps there's been an outbreak of lycanthropy," he writes slyly.

Magic bullets? Lycanthropy? East Hampton? This is starting to get interesting ...

The term "magic bullet" was devised by the German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich, who shared the 1908 Nobel Prize for advances in immunology. Ehrlich used "magic bullet" ("Zauberkugel" in German) to refer to the perfect drug or therapeutic agent that targets and zaps diseased cells without destroying any healthy tissue.

The phrase gained popularity when a 1940 Hollywood film biography of Ehrlich was titled "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet." It starred Edward G. Robinson as Ehrlich — and no, he didn't threaten rival bacteriologists by yelling, "Youse guys are cuttin' in on my petri dish racket!"

In a letter published in William Safire's book "Quoth the Maven," Dov Treiman of Johnson City, N.Y., suggested Ehrlich may have picked up the term from Carl Maria von Weber's 1821 romantic opera "Der Freischuetz" ("The Free Shooter"). The opera's libretto, Treiman explains, refers to "Freikugeln" (free-shooting bullets) that hit their intended target no matter where you point your gun.

"'Freikugeln' may mean 'free-shooting bullets,'" Treiman writes, "but seemingly everybody who speaks, or more importantly, writes about the opera refers to them as 'magic bullets.'"

Today people use "magic bullet" to refer to a single-shot solution to any problem: nuclear proliferation, global warming or ring-around-the-collar.

It's used most often in a negative, cautionary way, as in, "Don't think there's a magic bullet," "I haven't got a magic bullet," or "Praise the Lord, and pass the magic bullet."

The term "silver bullet," which first appeared in print in 1806, is based on the belief that the only thing that can kill a werewolf is a silver bullet. That's why Conway's letter refers to "an outbreak of lycanthropy."

"Lycanthropy," from the Greek words "lykos" (wolf) and "anthropos" (human being), refers to the delusion that one has become a wolf or the belief that such a transformation is possible through witchcraft or magic.

The term "silver bullet" also received a shot in the arm from the popular radio and TV series "The Lone Ranger," in which the title character carries silver bullets and sometimes leaves one behind to show he has been there.

Today, the terms "magic bullet" and "silver bullet" are virtually interchangeable, though, to my mind, "magic bullet" conveys a sharper sense of scientific precision.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.