Jokes as Sources of Phrases

[Mark A Mandel]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2002, Fred Shapiro wrote:

#So it looks like the phrase may have originated in a joke.  I wonder how
#many others had joke origins.  Legman indicates elsewhere that "don't make
#waves" originated as the punchline of a scatological joke.  My researches
#suggest that "there's no such thing as a free lunch" originated as the
#punchline of an economists' joke.

Cf. "Where were you when the shit hit the fan?"

Somewhat similarly, growing up in the fifties and sixties and reading,
inter alia, my parents' and grandparents' old books and magazines, I
gradually reconstructed the original of "That was no X, that was my Y!"
from all the parodies and half-quotes that assumed that it was (overly?)
well known to the reader.

-- Mark A. Mandel