What is the origin of the phrase “ivory tower”?
The term was first used in Song of Solomon 7:4, but its meaning is different. Its current meaning seems to be from French tour d’ivoire, in an 1837 poem by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, where it is used to describe the poetical attitude of Alfred de Vigny as contrasted with the more socially engaged Victor Hugo. The first known written use in English is H. L. Bergson’s Laughter (1911) by Frederick Rothwell and Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ivory_tower The first mention of ivory towers is in the Bible, Song of Solomon 7:4 (King James Version): Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. That biblical allusion is to the notion of ivory towers as symbols of virginal purity. The contemporary figurative meaning is of a place of unworldly isolation
