Used in military and football patois, the phrase take a articulatio genus dates back to at least 1960.

This past weekend, millions of viewers witnessed American football players, among unusual athletes and celebrities, "take a knee" during the playing of the US national anthem ahead of outset. The kneelers, among others WHO stayed in locker-suite or locked arms in solidarity, were defying US President Donald Trump's recent remarks profanely calling for athletes complaintive the anthem and flag away refusing to stand to personify "fired."

With #TakeAKnee (and #TakeTheKnee, though Google Trends identifies take a knee as much a more popular search) taking off online, millions more of us witnessed the gesture, and look, "take a knee" shoot on a new meaning in the broader public consciousness—and lexicon.

The protests began last tumble in the National Football game League (NFL) preseason when then San Francisco 49ers signal caller Colin Kaepernick sat on the bench during the anthem to protest police brutality against minorities. Equally he explained in a post-brave interview:

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is large than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. Thither are bodies in the street and multitude getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

Though sitting itself has a long history in the Civil Rights protests, Kaepernick, joined by teammate Eric Reid, successful a varied gesture in his final preseason game: They took a knee, i.e., knelt down on one knee. Before the stake, Kaepernick and Reid spoke with Nate Boyer, a former endless center and Green Beret, who had previously written him a alphabetic character expressing a frustrated understanding of his protest. During their conversation, Boyer bucked up Kaepernick to "take a knee" as a compromise, in part observance work force and women who have sacrificed themselves for what the hymn and pin represent and in function peacefully protesting injustices that give birth failed to live functioning thereto symbolism.

Atomic number 3 Boyer told CBS Sports:

We sorta came to a middle ground where atomic number 2 would take a knee alongside his teammates. Soldiers take a knee before of a down brother's grave, you have intercourse, to evidenc deference. When we're on a police, you know, and we go into a security halt, we take a genu, and we pull security.

And as Eric Reid himself notable in an article for the New York Multiplication on Monday:

We chose to kneel because it's a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.

The gesture of taking a human knee is a dynamic and complex one, and one that many soldiers, like Boyer, so make to show prise for their fallen fellows or to take a rest while on a mission.

Catholics likewise traditionally take knees—or kowtow—before the communion table, American Samoa did subjects ahead rulers in ancientness and the Middle Ages. Marriage-proposers too traditionally take knees when interrogatory for their partner's hand in marriage. Kneeling, here, is at once submissive and reverent, showing humbleness and adoration.

Quarterbacks as wel kneel during actualized gameplay. If a team has a svelte lead at the end of the game, for illustrate, they quarterback will much wish drop to one knee when snapped the orb. This ends the play out but besides runs down the punch in ordain to fend off a fumble or interception and thus lose their lead.

In its entree for the term , Dictionary.com cites the Historical Dictionary of American Gull for the conversational football game phrase, which dates it back out to the 1990s.

Other evidence along Google Books turns up the football field expression in 2003, the same year Boise Say Broncos football omnibus Dan Hawkins memorably said of his decision non to exhaust the clock when his team had a same-sexual conquest lede with to a lesser degree a arcminute to go in the game:

If we had knelt on the ball at the end of the game, wouldn't that induce been the end of the game? Yeah, information technology would let been. Merely Gandhi didn't take a knee, Dean Martin Luther World-beater didn't direct a knee, Thomas Edison didn't take a knee, and I sure as hell am not expiration to take a knee.

Knee itself—this is an etymology blog after all—comes from the Old English cnéow, whose first k sound was in the beginning pronounced. The Oxford English Dictionary dates cnéow to as early as 825; its derived verb, kneel, is found some 1000. The words come from a common Germanic and, before it, Indo-European source for the body parting. The genu– in the Latin-based genuflect, e.g., is related, as is the Balkan country -gon, or "angle," in words like Pentagon.

Google Books also yields an proterozoic military use in 2000, from J.S. Kindrick's Gulf War-era novel The Spirit Horses:

I instinctively take a knee to uncomparable side of the wadi in preparation of our react-to-contact practise, an Australian peel-backmost, as I hear the distinct and patent flat pop of an AK.

Kindrick's knee-pickings depicts the gesture equally a defensive maneuver, allowing soldiers to steady themselves and quickly pivot punt into action.

Another sports-accompanying example comes in 2000 from Thomas M. Gerbasi's boxing chronicles, Ring Ramblings:

By the ten percent round, McClellan was blinking constantly, and you just had the catgut feeling that something was very wrong. Gerald took a knee double, the second time for a 10 count.

Gerbasi's knee-taking is an drive to stabilize, to refuse an inevitable defeat.

Just the earliest example Google Books offers for forms of taking a knee comes in a 1993 edition of the diary Military Medical specialty. Describing use of a knee-pad, a soldier marks off taking a knee as a novel expression:

…I slipped in a knee lard in each face. This was not restrictive, sweaty, OR expensive. I "took a knee" happening whichever stifle was fewer turgid that day, and I switched pad sides occasionally.

I'll parting IT to a good deal more capable ante-daters for when, incisively, aim a knee emerges, as advantageously as to the lexicographers who give notice deftly tease it out from other similar formations in the language, e.g., drop to a knee.

But there's no doubt that Kaepernick, along with the more and more many who are joining him on and off the field in solidarity, that the act of taking the knee—one already burdened with complex symbolisation—has emerged with a all-powerful and provocative new meaning, a meaning of peaceful, world protest against unjustness and inequality.

And I, for one, am especially curious to see if the very phrase bring a knee becomes its own metaphorical shorthand for protestation in speech.

Update:

I wanted antedatings, and Ben Walker delivered. He's found an example of take a knee in 1960 concerning a University of South Carolina Gamecocks Varsity-Alumni game, when an alumni player asked his teammates to "return a knee for a second of silence for our Rex Enright," a coach and recreation director who had recently died. For so much Sir Thomas More from Zimmer, channelise all over to the excellent web log, Language Log. I've updated the teaser to reflect Zimmer's excellent inquiry.

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