(fairly) new (but unlisted) "benefits"

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 5, 2011, at 4:24 AM, Eric Nielsen wrote:

> 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
>

Browsing through the Google Books hits under "friends with benefits" does get rid of most (not all) of the references to the movie, but I'm not sure how to arrange the hits chronologically if it's possible to do so.  Most seem to be from the last 5 years, which doesn't help.  Alternatively there's Nexis, but they keep changing the search algorithms and I haven't kept up.

LH

> 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
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org