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

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 16:46:59 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>>-----
>>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."
>>-----
>Would this, I wonder, have been famous enough to have sponsored the
>later occurrences of the trope, culminating in its status as one of
>the several official tropes-in-residence on ESPN SportsCenter?  Or
>does it reflect an already established (but not easily attested)
>usage elsewhere?

Later in the Feb. thread, Wilson Gray recalled hearing a similar
expression in 1954, so it was most likely floating around in various forms
when Dino picked it up c. 1963. As for the ESPN version, that seems to
have developed out of pro basketball usage in the early to mid-'90s.


--Ben Zimmer