(fairly) new (but unlisted) "benefits"

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 14, 2011, at 11:02 PM, victor steinbok wrote:

> Going in the other direction, in the just finished (season-final) episode of
> Leverage (TNT), the final scene included a comment about "friends with
> bennies". Thought I should mention it in this context.
>
> VS-)

More new data:
On an Air France flight to Paris (on my way to Ljubljana) a few days ago, I learned from the in-flight entertainment system that one of the alternate expressions we were discussing earlier, "sex friends", is actually French for "friends with benefits", or more accurately for "No Strings Attached", the Hollywood romcom starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman as attractive opposite-sex friends who decide to have casual sex with each other while avoiding becoming romantically involved, not to be confused with "Friends With Benefits", he Hollywood romcom starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as attractive opposite-sex friends who decide to have casual sex with each other while avoiding becoming romantically involved.  The only question is what the French for "Friends With Benefits" will turn out to be, now that "Sex Friends" is taken.

LH

>
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Ben Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:
>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>
>>> On Aug 5, 2011, at 10:43 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 10:37:55AM -0400, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Successively telling GBooks Advanced Search to
>>>>> search before xxxx for "[best] friend[s] with
>>>>> benefits" (quoted; all 4 combinations) arrives at
>>>>> just 9 hits before Dec 31, 2003, the earliest of
>>>>> which (that appears relevant) is alleged to be
>>>>> Apr 21, 1997, in New York Magazine, Vol. 30, No.
>>>>> 15, page 106, a personal ad (a believable source, surely):
>>>>>
>>>>> "Wanted: Best Friend With Benefits  I'm an
>>>>> outgoing, fun, family-oriented 33-year-old (hell
>>>>> of a catch), with a lot to offer.
>>>>> Nonanorexic-looking Jewish female, living in
>>>>> central NJ. I have a lot of plans for the spring
>>>>> and summer ... I realized I was missing the
>>>>> special guy to share the good times with. You
>>>>> should be 31-40, just a bit romantic, ...
>>>>
>>>> But in context this looks like it means 'committed romantic/sexual
>>>> partner who is also a close friend', i.e. emphasizing the fact that the
>>>> advertiser is looking for someone who will be not only a lover but also
>>>> a close friend. She's not just looking for a friend to sleep with on
>>>> occasion.
>>>>
>>> That seems to be the case in the Morissette song as well, FWIW.  A
>>> speculation: maybe the FWB locution was recruited as a kind of
>>> euphemism for the already existing "fuck buddy".
>>
>> That seems plausible to me, based on the late-'90s citations in the
>> Usenet archive on Google Groups (http://ddIyP). Exx from '95-'96
>> mostly allude to the song, or at least share the underlying concept.
>> Here, for instance, is a Morissettian "friend with benefits" in a
>> personal ad from 11/28/96:
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/dfw.personals/msg/c3dea870a2afe1de
>>
>> Starting in '98, we see it used more in the "fuck buddy" sense, e.g.:
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.romance/msg/aac2adcff389825c
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>> --
>> Ben Zimmer
>> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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