"It's X's world. We're (all) just living in it."

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:41:08 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

> From today's Times (E1):
>
>"Three centuries later, it's still Louis XIV's world.  We're just
>living in it."
>
>It occurs to me that although I've heard this countless times, with
>various values for the variable in the subject line, and of course
>without the necessary presence of the "still" in the version cited
>here, I have no idea where and when it originated, and Google, which
>offers 1620 hits on "world we're just living in it", doesn't
>immediately help.  Does anyone know?  (And what's the
>lexical/constructional counterpart of an earworm, anyway?)

Didn't we do this one back in February (the "Teen Lingo" thread, which
Larry participated in)?  The earliest cite I found was from 1964:

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http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0502a&L=ads-l&P=3747

Looks like we may have Dean Martin to thank for the expression.  From a
1964 column by Earl Wilson:

Reno Evening Gazette, January 4, 1964, p. 10/1
When Dean [Martin], Frank [Sinatra] and their buddy Sammy Davis Jr.
appeared at the Las Vegas Sands' llth anniversary, Dean bowed to Frank
and said, "It's your world, Frank; I just live in it."
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--Ben Zimmer