Wine, Women and Song

"Wine, women, and song" is a hendiatris that endorses hedonistic lifestyles or behaviors. A more modern form of the idea is often expressed as "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll," a phrase popularized by British singer Ian Dury in his song of the same title.

Similar tripartite mottoes have existed for a long time in many languages, for example:

Not all hendiatris including women are positive: in Greek – "Πύρ, γυνή και θάλαττα" ("fire, women and the sea") instead suggest three dangers rather than pleasures, and Turkish At, Avrat, Silah ("horse, woman, weapon") offers the three essentials of quite another culture.

The following "tetrad" (using four concepts rather than three) predates all of the above:

The English couplet "Who loves not woman, wine, and song / Remains a fool his whole life long" appears in print as early as 1837, translated from German verse attributed to Martin Luther.John Addington Symonds used the phrase "Wine, Women and Song" as the title for his 1884 book of translations of medieval Latin students' songs. Ironically, Symonds is largely known today for his passionate writings about male homosexual love.

The phrase in German is apparently older than in English. Symonds and the anonymous 1837 writer both provide the German text, attributing it to Luther. The attribution to Luther has been questioned, however, and the earliest known reference in German is to a folksong first printed in 1602.Bartlett's Familiar Quotations cites Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826) as a likely source, but any use by him would have to be a later use of the phrase.

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