"It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Sam Clements wrote:

> If you subscribe to the theory(as I do)  that the phrase is a play on "It
> ain't over 'til the [fat][church]lady sings," then Berra probably didn't say
> it in 1973, or even before 1976 or so.
>
> If you think Berra used it in 1973, then one could assume that the
> 'fat/church lady' was a play on Berra.  But I doubt it.

I've done a lot of research on "the fat lady sings" and on Berraisms, and
it never occurred to me that one of these was a play on the other; I just
figured they were independent synonymous sayings.

Since my previous e-mail, I have found a 1977 usage of "ain't over..." on
Nexis.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
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