the lone ranger didn’t come up with kemo sabe but he sure did popularize it.
speedy gonzales is often cited.
if you call someone mighty mouse, porky pig, or miss piggy i’m sure they’ll know what you’re getting at.
"He’s a real Brainiac… /
Sitting in his brainy shack… "
I have now gotten that stuck in my own head.
I made my own earworm. Damn, that’s pathetic.
I had always assumed that the term “brainiac” must owe something to ENIAC, an early computer.
“Braniac” almost certainly originates from the Superman villain as a slang term. He’s been around longer than most realize and, as I’ve understood the term at least, connotates not just someone who’s abnormally smart but someone who underestimates others intelligence. Much as the villain would with Superman.
Seconding “Kryptonite” as a synonym for a personal weakness, much like “Achilles Heel”. Most seem to understand it through cultural osmosis if nothing else.
Another name that’s getting a lot of use now is “Bizarro”.
And is it true that “Tonto” means fool?
Narf!
It’s still the name of a fast-food chain here in South Africa.
I’ve heard Wonder Woman occasionally used, usually to describe someone who does the working mom thing well, which is … weird given what I know about WW’s origins.
Does He-Man count? Or was it used before the cartoon/toys?
I’m almost sure that goes back at least as far as the Charles Atlas ads in comic books.
When asking a question “So, riddle me this, Batman.”
When I was a little kid, my first exposure to the term ‘Braniac’ was as the U.S. title to a cheapie 1960s Mexican horror film about a sorcerer who was burned at the stake centuries before returning & sucking out the brains of his enemies’ descendants.
I know it goes back as far as the Little Rascals, what with their He-Man Woman Hater’s Club.
As referenced in the Dukes of Stratosphear song Brainiac’s Daughter.
Similarly (though less commercially) a “Dagwood sandwich” used to be slang for an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sandwich. (From Dagwood’s habit of making such sandwiches in the Blondie strip.)
Ah, here we go: Dagwood sandwich.
Perhaps, but I remember it being used in a negative way, in regard to an intelligent individual, back in the mid-70s, and was an offshoot of referring to such an individual as “the class Brain”, i.e., that one overly intelligent individual in your classroom at school.
I suppose my doubts are unfounded then.
Still, 1982 is surprising. You’d think those of us reading comics in the 1960s and '70s would have picked up on that earlier.
It kinda surprises me too. Brainiac seems like something my mom would say, but she didn’t know anything about comics later than the 50’s. I wonder how many people who use the term even know who Brainiac is?
“Daddy Warbucks” is sometimes used to mean a rich benefactor. The Urban Dictionary gives five definitions of the phrase, which derives from Little Orphan Annie.
Although Manfred von Richthofen has been nicknamed “The Red Baron,” that had been forgotten until Snoopy popularized it.
Well, sure. But lexicographers would be searching for the first written & published instance they could fine, which in most cases post-dates the oral use.
An interesting column on the name Brainiac:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2006/11/30/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-79/
Braniac? Supervillain who can move bowels telekinetically?