What's shakin', bacon?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Great shirts, Arnold.

I heard "Not too soon, you big baboon!" in 1970 as a comeback to "See
you later, alligator!"

It's in HDAS in the citation block for "baboon."

I am reminded of the elocutionary cliche', "How now, brown cow?"

Could this have been the progenitor? (I've never encountered it used
as a salutation, but Urbandicitioary has.)

I heard it from my grandparents in the 1950s. GB appears to have it from 1926.

JL
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 8:12 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: What's shakin', bacon?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Dec 4, 2011, at 4:30 PM, victor steinbok wrote:
>
>> I don't find anything particularly surprising about the "what's shakin'
>> bac'n?" pattern and there is a possible reason for its existence quite
>> aside from "rejuvenation of an old pattern". It may well be an clever
>> extension of "shake'n'bake" instead.
>>
>> As for "See you later alligator", if for no other reason, it's been kept
>> alive by Lubriderm commercials, although they lack the witty retort--which
>> is, nonetheless, implied. Aside from that, I've been hearing from
>> elementary-to-middle-school students virtually continuously since I learned
>> it myself (in college--but my sister was in elementary school at the time).
>
> notes on the verse form here:
>
> http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/alligator-goodbyes/
>
> as Jon Lighter reported, the pattern seems to have been around for 60+ years.
>
> arnold
>
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