You Only Live Once - YOLO

Garson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Sun Aug 26 19:59:09 UTC 2012


Thanks for the ack, Ben. Entertaining and illuminating material in a
very well written column: your trademark.

The article at the QI website does mention the key reference work:
Dictionary of Modern Proverbs and its fine cite for the Schlitz beer
slogan. But it doesn't include Charlie's fun acronym.

Ben, do you know how long the link you have given will work? Will the
article migrate behind a pay wall?

Garson

On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: You Only Live Once - YOLO
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 26, 2012, at 2:30 PM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>
>> _The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs_ gives "c.1966" as the early date for "You only go around (round) once in life."
>>
>> "YOGA OIL," as the young people don't say.
>>
>> --Charlie
>
> YOGA OIL:  I like it.  Too bad it goes against the spirit of Buddhism et al., which tend to suggest that we go around a lot more than once, albeit in different formats.
>
> LH
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
>> Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2012 9:44 AM
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Aug 26, 2012, at 8:48 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>>
>>> I take a look at "YOLO" (possible WOTY candidate?) in my latest Boston
>>> Globe column, citing Garson on the history of the expanded expression.
>>> =20
>>> http://b.globe.com/yolobz
>>> =20
>>> --bgz
>>
>> Very nice; I'd only suggest one additional data point for the =
>> trajectory, the old commercial for Schlitz beer:  "You only go around =
>> once in life so you've got to grab for all the gusto you can." (with =
>> possible variants on the wording).  Here's one version of the commercial =
>> from 1971:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DleKu2vEPvGw
>> Remember, when you're out of Schlitz you're out of beer.
>>
>> The "gusto" spot is authoritatively ranked as high as 46th greatest =
>> commercial of all time: =
>> http://www.drewbabb.com/100-greatest-commercials/commercials-page-five.htm=
>> .  And it's not dead; a Google search turns it up in a story about Paul =
>> Ryan (http://www.journal-advocate.com/sterling-columnists/ci_21318419_), =
>> and in a sermon suggesting that it (and presumably the YOLO movement =
>> more generally) represents a paradigm at odds with God's =
>> (http://www.faithbasedonfacts.org/main/?q=3Dnode/80).=20
>>
>>
>> LH
>>
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>
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