I was at the Library of Congress last week finishing up research for my next book, seeing four films. One of them–The Hater of Men, 1917–had Bessie Barriscale as a girl reporter turned off of marriage by the divorce cases she covered. She breaks up with her nice young fiance, played by John Gilbert (20 years old and looking all of 15, and sporting a cute little comedy moustache).
I hope I am not spoiling the film for all of you, but at the end, Bessie rushes back into Jack’s arms, saying (via title, of course): “Oh, Billy, any girl’s a fool to get married–NOT!”
So that expression was already common enough in 1917 to be used in a movie! I thought that was a kinda neat bit of slang trivia.
How about that? I remember when it really took off in the 80’s among my metal head friends. I wonder if it was laying low for decades or died and then was coincidentally revived.
It reminds me of the resurgence of “well” as a qualifier in the UK in the 1980s. It became trendy to say things like “I’m well tired”, and is still in use now in the teenies: “you is well nang innit”. I was surprised to find it used in the same way by Bertie in the books of P.G. Wodehouse.
Well, to me, if Eve said that, it would imply that she found the earliest cite and was excited about it - the negation of ‘NOT!’ would connect to her disappointment.
Well, you metal heads always were ahead of the curve. I never heard it at all until the Wayne’s World craze in the early 1990’s. God, it was run into the ground over about six months in 1992.
Now it has lain dormant for twenty years . . . and might be fresh again.
I predict in the future, when we have more people and less things to research, that Language as a virus studies will predict these occurrances, unfortunatley, they’ll be about as successful as that other ‘science’ “meteorology”
