A question I had 8 years ago

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/one_swallow_does_not_a_summer_make It's not a commonly used word order, but it is a fairly well-known construction. It dates back to an old translation of Aristotle: "One swallow does not a summer make" One possible explanation is that the translator chose this word order to try and preserve the word order in Ancient Greek, but no one really knows.

I believe this is one of the tools of Rhetoric (language tools used to persuade) and (let me look it up) is called Anastrophe. Part of the sentence is inverted to make it more memorable. It must work. After all, you've been thinking about this for eight years. :) "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

This kind of English is “valid”, but this even confuses a native speaker like myself. No one talks like this in conversation.

wait, how do we read it 😭? Strategy does not make a Military in Trump's great faith?


A beard a philosopher does not make. I might be 100% wrong but I think it came from back in the say when people thought English was a latin-based language.

It's not something you'll hear every day, but it's not an uncommon way of phrasing that either.

It's not the 'normal' way to say something but it's fine, just used to create interest in the title and stand out. It's probably, in this case, to bring attention to the 'does not'.

It’s not common. Used occasionally for emphasis or poetic type reasons. Or if you’re pretending to be Yoda. 

It is a generic phrase used sometimes in literature and journalism. "[action phrase] does not a [noun] make" For example "Reading a book does not an expert make" Your example is saying that "Trump believing in the military is not a strategy itself"

You'll see this sort of construction in Shakespeare as well -- I think the first time I encountered it was Romeo & Juliet -- "younger than she are happy mothers made" I am not an expert here but personally I would say this is not a construct people use in current English unless they're *trying* to sound archaic. There are other constructs where we mess with word order that don't feel archaic like this one, just formal.

It's an example of fossilization, where a construction that was once common has gone away except for extremely specific things that have become "a thing". Strictly speaking this is just old to the point of being simply wrong. But it has stuck around in this exact set up because.... well just because.

My instinct says it's Star War's Yoda speak