Wine, women and song
Encyclopedia
The cliché
Cliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...

 "wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

, women, and song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

"
is a rhetorical figure of a triad or hendiatris
Hendiatris
Hendiatris is a figure of speech used for emphasis, in which three words are used to express one idea...

. It describes a lifestyle or set of behaviors which are indulgent or pleasure-seeking. Similar tripartite mottoes have existed for a long time in many languages, for example:
  • Bengali
    Bengali language
    Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...

    /Hindi
    Hindi
    Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

    /Sanskrit
    Sanskrit
    Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

     – "Sur, Sura, Sundari" (music, wine and woman)
  • Bulgarian
    Bulgarian language
    Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...

     – "Пиене, ядене и някоя сгодна женица" (drink, food and a good woman)
  • Chinese
    Chinese language
    The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

     – "葡萄酒, 美女,和音乐" (wine, women and song)
  • Czech
    Czech language
    Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

     – "Víno, ženy a zpěv" (wine, women and song)
  • Danish
    Danish language
    Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

     – "Vin, kvinder og sang" (wine, women and song)
  • Finnish
    Finnish language
    Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

     – "Viini, laulu ja naiset" (wine, song, and women)
  • German
    German language
    German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

     – "Wein, Weib und Gesang" (wine, woman and singing)
  • Italian
    Italian language
    Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

     – "Bacco, tabacco e Venere" (Bacchus
    Dionysus
    Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

    , tobacco and Venus)
  • Persian
    Persian language
    Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

     – "Kabab, Sharab va Shabab" (meat, wine and youth)
  • Norwegian
    Norwegian language
    Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

     – "Piker, vin og sang" (women, wine and song)
  • Polish
    Polish language
    Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

     – "Wino, kobiety i śpiew" (wine, women and song)
  • Swedish
    Swedish language
    Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

     – "Vin, kvinnor och sång" (wine, women and song)
  • Spain
    Spanish language
    Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

     – "Naipes, Mujeres y Vino, Mal Camino" (cards, women and wine, bad ways)
  • Portuguese
    Portuguese language
    Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

     – "putas e vinho verde" (whores and green wine)
  • African American Vernacular English
    African American Vernacular English
    African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...

     – "forties and shorties" (forties referring to 40 ounce beer, and shorties referring to women. Also sometimes called "40s, blunts, and hoes")

"Sex, drugs and rock and roll" is a modern variation of it. The terms correspond to wine, women and song with edgier and updated vices. The term was popularised by the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

s, and composed by Ian Dury
Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...

 in his 1977 song of the same name.

Not all hendiatris including women are positive: in Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 – "Πύρ, γυνή και θάλαττα" ("fire, women and the sea") instead suggest three dangers rather than pleasures, and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

 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:
  • Persian
    Persian language
    Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

     "دویار زیرک و از باده کهن دو منی فراغتی و کتابی و گوشه چمنی" a popular rubaiyyat (quatrain
    Quatrain
    A quatrain is a stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines of verse. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and China; and, continues into the 21st century, where it is...

    ) by Omar Khayyám
    Omar Khayyám
    Omar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....

     (1048–1131):

"Two sweethearts,
Two flasks of old wine,
A book of verse
And a cosy corner in the garden."

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...

, Quatrain xii.


The phrase may have also originated with the following couplet:
  • "Who does not love wine, women and song / Remains a fool his whole life long." Variations on this quote have been attributed to Martin Luther
    Martin Luther
    Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

    , although Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
    Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
    Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, often simply called Bartlett's, is an American reference work that is the longest-lived and most widely distributed collection of quotations...

     names Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826) as a more likely source.


The waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...

 "Wine, Women and Song" (Wein, Weib und Gesang
Wein, Weib und Gesang
Wein, Weib und Gesang , Op. 333, is a waltz by Johann Strauss II. It is a choral waltz in its original form, although it is seldom heard in this version today. It was commissioned for the Vienna Men's Choral Association's so-called Fools' Evening on 2 February 1869 with a dedication to the...

) is Op. 333 (1869) of Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...

.

The lines Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue/Deutscher Wein und deutscher Sang (German women, German loyalty/German wine, and German song) are found in the (never sung) second verse of Das Lied der Deutschen
Das Lied der Deutschen
The "'" , has been used wholly or partially as the national anthem of Germany since 1922. The music was written by Joseph Haydn in 1797 as an anthem for the birthday of the Austrian Emperor Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire...

, the third verse of which is the German national anthem.

The British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

, in his work "Energized Enthusiasm," suggests that "wine, women, and song" may be utilised towards the development of genius in the individual or the attainment of mystical states.

The musical trio Wine, Women and Song consists of award-winning singer/songwriters Gretchen Peters
Gretchen Peters
Gretchen Peters is a singer-songwriter in the folk/country genre. She was born in New York and raised in Boulder, Colorado, but moved to Nashville in the late 1980s...

, Suzy Bogguss
Suzy Bogguss
Susan Kay "Suzy" Bogguss is an American country music singer. In the 1980s and 90s she released one platinum and three gold albums and charted six top ten singles, winning the Academy of Country Music's award for Top New Female Vocalist and the Country Music Association's Horizon Award.After...

 and Matraca Berg
Matraca Berg
Matraca Maria Berg is an American country music singer and songwriter. She has released five albums: three for RCA Records, one for Rising Tide Records and one for Dualtone Records, and has charted in the top 40 of the U.S. Billboard country charts with "Baby, Walk On" and "The Things You Left...

.

In a wagon scene in Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes is a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson, and syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his...

, Calvin asks Hobbes if he thinks the secret to happiness is "money, cars and women" or "just money and cars."

In the Poison song
Poison (band)
Poison is an American glam metal band that achieved great success in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. To date, Poison has sold over 30 million records worldwide and have sold 15 million records in the United States alone. The band has also charted ten singles to the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100,...

 Nothin' But A Good Time
Nothin' but a Good Time
"Nothin' But a Good Time" is the first single from the second Poison album Open Up and Say...Ahh!. The B-sides are "Livin' For the Minute" and "Look But You Can't Touch"....

, the lyrics include "They say I spend my money on women and wine."
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