[Ads-l] "The whole enchilada" [Antedating, 1951]

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

Barry Popik has a great blog post on these "enchilada" variants
(whole/full/big) and he has pushed the expression back to 1955. (He did
this long ago [1], by the way. The OED is still stuck at 1960, though.)

Here's Barry's analysis, which he revised yesterday to include the new data
after I alerted him to it.

https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/big_enchilada_full_enchilada_whole_enchilada


You'll find the 1951 usage below.

Yours hungrily,
Bonnie

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Who started the expression, "the whole enchilada?" It's around now.

(In Earl Wilson's column, "Pity a Poor Columnist! He Can't Lie in a Park,"
The San Francisco Examiner, 22 October 1951, p. 22. Newspapers all over the
country published Wilson's columns.)

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[1] Barry's 2004 ADS-L post:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2004-May/038436.html

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