Posted by Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations:

Among the more than 12,000 quotations in The Yale Book of Quotations, many have stories to tell transcending the quotation itself.  The famous epithet for the discipline of economics, “the dismal science,” is said by some standard reference works to have originated in Thomas Carlyle’s 1850 work, Latter-Day Pamphlets.  The Yale Book of Quotations, however, documents that Carlyle in fact used “the dismal science” earlier, in “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question” (1849).

The context of first use is of more than trivial interest here, as Carlyle coined “the dismal science” to describe anti-slavery economists (Carlyle himself argued in this essay for the reintroduction of slavery into the West Indies).  Economists may therefore be proud to be associated with the object of Carlyle’s disdain.