"88," White Power for "Heil Hitler"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

> What, however, is the etymological fact (if we know)? In the back of
> my mind lurks a military-explosives origin, not a sexual one.

The context of the earliest citations is clearly a military-explosives
one.  It is also worth noting that the phrase was originally "a bigger
bang for a buck" rather than "more bang for the buck."  To my ear the
former phrase lends itself less to a sexual interpretation than the
latter.

Fred Shapiro


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