open the kimono (1974)

[Tom Dalzell]

I provide the 1974 Mueller citation in The Routledge Dictionary of
American Slang.

Tom Dalzell


On Nov 19, 2008, at 5:28 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> The business expression "open the kimono" was previously dated to
> 1979, by
> Bill Mullins and Grant Barrett:
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0506C&L=ADS-L&P=R6744
> http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/open_the_kimono/
>
> Antedatings from Google Book Search:
>
> ---
> 1974 Robert Kirk Mueller _Buzzwords: A Guide to the Language of
> Leadership_
> 117 _Open the Kimono, to_.  To reveal to the prospective customer (or
> other
> person to be impressed) secrets about new products planned or other
> goodies
> of interest.
> http://books.google.com/books?id=gEIsAAAAMAAJ
> ---
> 1974  Nancy Foy _The IBM World_ 185 As one executive put it: 'We have
> to
> decide how far we are going to open the kimono.' The all-encompassing
> kimono
> is closed tight over some perfectly respectable porions of the IBM
> anatomy.
> http://books.google.com/books?id=brxYAAAAMAAJ
> ---
> 1976 _From strategic planning to strategic management_ 133 Greater
> stakeholder understanding, though, means 'opening the kimono" more:
> more
> willingness to have what the enterprise is doing and what it is
> planning to
> do reviewed and reported by journalists.
> http://books.google.com/books?id=XDkMAAAAIAAJ
> ---
>
> (The last cite might actually be dated 1973: the book "chiefly
> presents the
> proceedings of the first International Conference on Strategic
> Management,
> 1973.")
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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