couch-surfing

[Benjamin Zimmer]

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http://www.couchsurfing.com/
What is Couch Surfing?
CouchSurfing.com helps you make connections worldwide. You can use the
network to meet people and then go and surf other members' couches!
When you surf a couch, you are a guest at someone's house. They will
provide you with some sort of accommodation, a penthouse apartment or
maybe a back yard to pitch your tent in. Stays can be as short as a
cup of coffee, a night or two, or even a few months or more. When you
offer your couch, you have complete control of who visits. The
possibilities are endless and completely up to you.
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One early use of "couch-surfing" is simply as a jocular expression for
lying on a couch (or lying on a couch while channel-surfing?):

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 Aug 1989, p. 5 (Factiva/Nexis)
Primeau lamented his team's numerous "nagging injuries" in the
preseason. "A lot of guys have back injuries," he said, chuckling.
"They must have been couch surfing over the summer."
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Tulsa World, 30 Aug 1991, p. C6 (Factiva)
Give me 65 years of feeling better over 70 or 75 years of couch surfing any day.
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The relevant sense of couch-surf(ing) (short-term "crashing" on
someone's couch) begins showing up c1993 (height of the slacker era),
in sources from the Western U.S.:


* couch-surf, v. trans. (rare)

http://groups.google.com/group/ba.mountain-folk/msg/1ce0a1949511c535
ba.mountain-folk, 24 Feb 1993
I'm currently homeless, couch-surfing friend's sofas and living out of
my truck, and emailing from telephone jacks as I can.


* couch-surfing, vbl. n.

Seattle Times, 19 Oct 1993, p. B3 (Factiva/Nexis)
A recent estimate put the number of homeless kids on Seattle streets
at 2,000. But that doesn't count kids living in vacant buildings or
those who regularly go "couch surfing," crashing from one friend's
sofa to the next, Ferguson said.

Rocky Mountain News, 29 May 1994, p. 14A (Factiva/Nexis)
In some ski-country communities, three people might cram a one-bedroom
condominium that rents for $800 monthly. Others might move from one
friend's living room sofa to another's every night, engaging in what
locals in one community call "couch-surfing."

Austin American-Statesman, 21 Aug 1994, p. A1 (Factiva)
In the construction of their own society, street kids have casual
jargon: Finding acquaintances with an apartment to stay at, for
example, is "couch surfing."


* couch-surf, v. intr.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4 June 1994, p. B1 (Factiva/Nexis)
He has lived mostly on his own for the past three years, "couch
surfing" from friend's house to friend's house - even living in a car
- but always attending school.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 14 Sep 1994, p. B1 (Factiva/Nexis)
Only 20 percent of the youths surveyed said they stayed at a shelter.
Most "couch-surf" with friends or sleep outside.


* couch-surfer, n.

Winnipeg Free Press, 2 Oct 1993 (Factiva)
Today, zines alone serve a wealth of interests from Brady Bunch
fanaticism and the study of hidden meanings in Family Circus cartoons
to guiding couch surfers - people who live off the kindness and living
room furniture of their friends.

Forbes, 17 Oct 1994, p. 356 (Factiva)
Some live in illegal tent communities like Mosquito Creek; others have
become "couch surfers"--a local term for people who rotate among the
couches of friends.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.skiing.alpine/msg/24385c0b59ee2477
rec.skiing.alpine, 15 Dec 1994
2 couch surfers need Whistler couch 12/29 to 12/31.


--Ben Zimmer

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