Jokes as Sources of Phrases

[Leslie Savan]

That sounds great. I'll ask Jolie.

Mark A Mandel wrote:
>
> 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