[Lexicog] "It ain't over til' the fat lady sings"

[Margaret Marks]

2008/5/8 Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>:
>
>  I assume the response below is a joke.  Here is what the recently published Yale Book of Quotations, which presents original research for many of the most famous quotations, has:
>
>  Ralph Carpenter, U.S. sports publicist, ca. 1932 - 1995
>
>  The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings.
>
>  Quoted in Dallas Morning News, 10 Mar. 1976.  Carpenter was sports information director at Texas Tech University when he uttered thi sline during a basketball game with Texas A&M.  Sportscaster Dan Cook used the expression in a television broadcast, 10 May 1978, before a Washington Bullets - San Antonio Spurs playoff basketball game (Cook has usually been credited as the originator).  "The fat lady" was then picked up and popularized by Washington coach Dick Motta.  However, a 1976 booklet, Southern Words and Sayings by Fabia Rue Smith and Charles Rayford Smith, includes the saying "Church ain't out 'till the fat lady sings," suggesting an ultimate origin in Southern proverbial lore.  Ralph Keyes, "Nice Guys Finish Seventh" (1992), records the recollections of several Southerners remembering similar phrases used as early as the 1950s.


This could be true. Sorry, I must have been confused. On top of
everything, Wikipedia cites one Fred R. Shapiro as the source of the
information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_ain't_over_'til_the_fat_lady_sings

Regards

Margaret Marks

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