Hi everyone, Mod R here.
Thank you so much for all the get well wishes! I feel much better, the antibiotics and painkillers have kicked in and I no longer want to saw my ear off, which is always a plus.
I did spend the weekend emulating “some bloke called Les, who is really miserable all the time” as Nanny Ogg would say. In order to distract myself, I fell into this research deep-dive about popular expressions and their surprisingly recent origins…or are they?
It turns out people get very heated about these, and there are few things I love more than nerdy fights. Some of the stats did seem…rectally derived, however, so let’s see if the wisdom of the Horde can settle the disputes.
Wardrobe Malfunction
This expression didn’t exist until the mid-noughties. I didn’t want to believe it, because that’s around the time I came into my English-as-a-second-language fluency and it seemed a phrase as old as accidentally catching your skirt in your knickers and giving everyone an eye-full.
Everyone is pretty in agreement that Justin Timberlake ripping Janet Jackson’s top during the Super Bowl is the first time we’ve collectively heard it. This did not ruin the tour. It was a different time.
Sweet Summer Child
Perhaps *the* most disputed in origin, the popular and slightly patronising phrase “oh, you sweet summer child” denotes someone who is naive. They have never known hardship in their lives, and what they (foolishly) claim has no basis in real experience.
When it was claimed that George R. R. Martin created the expression in 1996, a lot of receipts were produced about it being in use all the way back in 1840, and it being in common use with grandparents from the Silent Generation.
Thy home is all around,
Sweet summer child of light and air,
Like God’s own presence, felt, ne’er found,
A Spirit everywhere!
The West Wind, by James Staunton Babcock, New York, 1849
The Song of Ice and Fire author certainly applied it more literally that 19th century authors in any case: winter is coming, but the sweet summer child has never experienced its fear and darkness, because each season lasts several years in Westeros. In a question of “combination of words” vs “actual idiom with meaning of its own”, maybe 1996 should win. What do you think?
Debbie Downer
Again 2004 (a year for iconic phrases!), the character Debbie Downer was created by Rachel Dratch who debuted it on Saturday Night Live. The name seemed to enter popular use seemingly instantaneously.
Vociferous detractors claim this was a popular nickname going back to the 50s and 60s, and that “downer” for “person who finds the pessimistic side of everything” has an ever longer history, so the rhyme was bound to emerge.
I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle- SNL had copious real life inspiration, and some of the people who remember it from time immemorial are probably conflating it with “Negative Nancy”, another sobriquet that is very close in meaning.
The Friend Zone
The linguistic equivalent of cassette tapes, the Friend Zone originated in the popular 90s sitcom Friends, meaning it’s just under 30 years old.
It was nearly ubiquitous for a while, with magazine articles that advised you how to avoid it, and popular forums who allowed you to decry being stuck in it. The younger generation is calling out its toxic implications and rejecting it, so if you’re in your mid-30s or older, we may have witnessed its birth and fall into anachronism in our lifetimes.
Spam
And finally one that everyone agrees on: the reason we call junk or unwanted mail Spam isn’t because it’s a mix of bits and bobs no one would happily consume unless they were highly processed.
We do it because of Monty Python put Spam in a sketch in the 1970 and turned it into an inescapable item. When the first spam messages started appearing, early internet users took to calling them out in forums by using the SPAM! reference.
Language is always evolving and endlessly fascinating. The meteoric rise and fall of memes and other viral content floods colloquial speech with obscure references every other week.
And we still love to argue over two-centuries’-old poems. Isn’t that so cool?
Re: “Debby Downer”
I thought the catchphrase was “Puppy Uppers and Doggy Downers”, though I have no idea where that came from. So creating “Debby Downer” seems just an extension of comedic license…
On another but linked note of memes, how many folks of today understand the real meaning of “ring around the rosies…. All fall down…”?