undewater basket weaving (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Neither did I, because ca1970 the idea seemed clear to me that the defining
nature of such a mythical (we thought) course was its seemingly intentional
irrelevance to life, not necessarily its level of difficulty. Which, of
course, was held to be low: presumably you learned a few secret twists
unknown to the public, and that was that.

JL

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: undewater basket weaving (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 4:02 PM +0000 7/6/10, Charles C Doyle wrote:
> >I remember the phrase well (from the early 1960s).  But I could
> >never understand why underwater basket-weaving was supposed to seem
> >EASY!
> >
> >--Charlie
>
> Good point.  Maybe it's to stress the abstruse and irrelevant
> components of college courses rather than the easy part?  Strangely,
> I never wondered about this before.
>
> LH
>
> >________________________________________
> >From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> >Mullins, Bill AMRDEC [Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL]
> >Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2010 11:44 AM
> >
> >Boingboing has a post on the phrase "underwater basket weaving":
> >
> >http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/05/underwater-basket-we.html
> >
> >The original post has a N'archive cite from 1960; comments link to a
> >Wikipedia article that includes Sam Clement's 1956 cite (without credit
> >to Sam).  I found a 1952 cite and posted it in the comments there (we'll
> >see if it shows up), and will for posterity's sake include it here:
> >
> >_Cedar Rapids [IA] Gazette_, 3/6/1952, p 13 col 1
> >
> >"Other slangy speech and patter which came as a surprise to our panel of
> >experts were: "Moose" and "crocodile" as nicknames for an unpopular
> >girl, "ample samples" making reference to a well-liked food, and
> >"underwater basket weaving" as a way of saying that a certain course at
> >school is a snap."
> >
> >Google books has what appears to be a 1953 cite from the Michiganensean,
> >the yearbook of the Univ. of Michigan.  E-yearbooks.com has this in
> >their archive, but I don't have an account there to check it.
> >
> >A related cite:
> >_Yale Daily News_ 3/1/1941 p 2 col 2
> >"For it must be known that Cindy had spent so much time doing her
> >roommates' Basket Weaving that she had trouble with her own work."
> >Context indicates this is a synonym for Home Ec.
> >
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