Shadow of a Doubt
Given that we’re talking a metaphorical “shadow” twice-removed from that “blocking the light” sense, the distinction between “beyond a shadow of a doubt” and “without a shadow of a doubt” is nearly meaningless. “Beyond” does evoke a process of trust or belief gradually increasing to the point of complete certainty, but in the end “beyond a shadow” and “without a shadow” describe the same state of trustworthiness, and both phrases are considered “correct.”
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Molly:
May 11th, 2016 at 10:20 pm
Hi! Thank you for this article. I stumbled upon it as I was also curious about the origin of the phrase, because I found something very similar in Augustine’s Confessions! Check it out: “omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt.” -8.12.29 “All darkness (or shadows) of doubt dispersed.” It seems to me that this idiom goes much further back than you might think. I wonder if St. Augustine himself was the first to use it?