Antedating of "Been There, Done That" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Margaret Lee]

I've heard it as a rhyme:  "Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the hat."

--Margaret Lee

--- On Fri, 10/10/08, Bill Le May <blemay0 at MCHSI.COM> wrote:

From: Bill Le May <blemay0 at MCHSI.COM>
Subject: Re: Antedating of "Been There, Done That" (UNCLASSIFIED)
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Date: Friday, October 10, 2008, 6:29 PM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 8:53 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Antedating of "Been There, Done That"
(UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Antedating of "Been There, Done That"
(UNCLASSIFIED)
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>
> I don't whether this matters to the current thread, but as Fred's
cite
> suggests, IME, the bare BTDT is a lot older than the
> BTDT-bought-the-T-shirt version, which has which has always struck me
> as somewhat phoney, since "bought the T-shirt" pretty much
restricts
> the saying to rock shows, as opposed to extending it to life in
> general.

When I first heard the phrase, it was more common to obtain t-shirts at
tourist traps than rock shows. As seen on the old shorts that read:
"My parents went to <tourist trap> and all I got was this lousy
t-shirt"

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