(fairly) new (but unlisted) "benefits"

[Eric Nielsen]

A young person at work played this album for me when it first came out. Its
release was 1995, not 1992. I suppose she could have written the song
earlier than 1995.

I haven't listened to the song in a while, but I took the meaning as [best
friend] and the kicker [with benefits]. I should listen to it again.
However, from an interview of hers I read years ago, the alternative {best
[friend with benefits]} is also plausible: She stated that her and her band
members were having a contest to see who could have the most sex while they
were on tour.
(I'll have to look for the interview when I'm on a less-restricted
computer). I think it may have appeared in "Acoustic Guitar".

Very good songwriting IMHO. She is certainly talented enough to coin this
phrase. I tried a little searching on Google for the phrase, but the
bandwidth is clogged with info about the current, similarly-titled movie
"Friends with Benefits". I tried minusing out "film" and "movie", but it's
still quite a popular phrase. Any ideas on how to search for early
occurrences of the phrase?

Eric

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

>
> Not knowing the song, I was wondering whether the parsing at the time was
> [best friend] [with benefits] or {best [friend with benefits]].  Maybe it's
> hard to tell.
>
> LH
>
> On Aug 4, 2011, at 6:23 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
> > In fact, that was the first place I heard FWB, and thought it was a
> pretty clever turn of phrase. When FWB achieved wider currency, I wondered
> if Morissette had been the source, or merely a vector. Still don't know.
> >
> > Neal
> >
> > On Aug 4, 2011, at 6:05 PM, Brian Hitchcock <brianhi at SKECHERS.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Alanis Morissette, "Head Over Feet"  (Jagged Little Pill, 1992)
> >>
> >> You're the best listener that I've ever met
> >> You're my best friend
> >> Best friend with benefits
> >> What took me so long
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
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