Samson: You can try to cast doubt on him as much as you want, but I still have confidence in him. Regardless of what the tabloids are saying, there’s no way it’s true.Īngela: It’s not just the tabloids. The 'without' form of the expression emerged a in the mid-19th century but has faded somewhat and the 'beyond' form is now far more widely used.Angela: Did you hear that news story about all the terrible things your favorite actor said and did? proved an alibi in the clearest manner imaginable but what confirmed this beyond the shadow of a doubt was that he was then trying a robbery. That he was innocent of the crime his evidences would prove. The earliest use of the expession that I have found is in the report of a legal case in which a judge was accused o a crime, reported in the English newspaper The Derby Mercury, September 1772: 'Without/beyond a shadow of a doubt' was coined in the same way, to indicate something not merely 'without doubt' but without even the smallest, most insubstantial scrap of doubt. Least instead of a man, ye finde but the shadowe of a man. For example, the phrase 'a shadow of a man' has been used since the 16th century to refer to a man much diminished from his earlier stature, as in this line from the English Puritan writer Andrew Kingsmill's A Viewe Mans Estate, circa 1569:

The expression 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' or, as it was more commonly expressed in the past, 'without a shadow of a doubt' originated in England in the 18th century.Ī thing being a shadow of its former self has long been used to indicate a thing reduced in power and substance. What's the origin of the phrase 'Beyond a shadow of a doubt'? If something is said to be 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' the speaker is certain that it is true, with no possibility of ambiguity.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt What's the meaning of the phrase 'Beyond a shadow of a doubt'?

Cast a shadow of doubt meaning