Your humble scribe hadn't heard the phrase "Hobson's Choice" for awhile until the other day in a Wall Street Journal article. (Germany now has one, as far as bailing out Greece is concerned. But I digress.) A Hobson's Choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered. Because a person may, of course, refuse to take that option, the choice really becomes "
take it or leave it". The phrase is said to have originated with Thomas Hobson (1544-1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. To rotate the use of his horses he offered the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door - or none at all. Apparently he had some 40 horses - a wide choice - when in fact there was
only one choice. A Hobson's Choice is to be distinguished, gentle reader, from a "Morton's Fork" wherein the choices offered yield equivalent (often undesirable) results - more widely known as a Catch-22.
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