# "I started that. Yeah that was me"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [March 8, 2006, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517 "2006-03-08T07:25:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/1 "2006-03-08T07:25:20Z")
Remember the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Richard Lewis is convinced he started the phrase “The _blank_ from hell”?
Obviously, that’s ridiculous, but who here can claim they started a phrase which got popular, at least in a local context?
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### Author:  [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/2 "2006-03-08T07:31:48Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#):
>
> Remember the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Richard Lewis is convinced he started the phrase “The _blank_ from hell”?
>
> Obviously, that’s ridiculous, but who here can claim they started a phrase which got popular, at least in a local context?
I don’t know, but it amuses me no end when Poster A uses the phrase “metric shitload” or “metric buttload”, and Poster B comes along and says, “Hey! You owe me a new keyboard! That’s brilliant!! Mind if I steal that??”
It seems to happen at least once a month.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/3 "2006-03-08T07:44:57Z")
AFAIK, I was the first person to describe someone of low intelligence as “wading in the shallow end of the gene pool.”
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### Author:  [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/4 "2006-03-08T07:52:02Z")
Nah. Not on _purpose_, anyway. “Penis ensues” belongs to the masses - they ran with it. I hid under a rock.
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### Author:  [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/5 "2006-03-08T08:52:37Z")
As a result of several years of working in advertising and brand consulting…
Aibo (which Sony just killed, the rat bastards)
Mindstorm (the Lego robot kits)
A whole bunch of others, but they’re not as well known.
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### Author:  [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/6 "2006-03-08T09:34:35Z")
When I was a child I would have sworn on a stack of Holy bibles that I invented the word “nincompoop”
I believed it so much so that I argued with my mother at lengths end, that I did indeed, invent this word. :rolleyes:
I have no idea why I thought that.
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### Author:  [@Whifton\_Polekitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whifton_Polekitty)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/7 "2006-03-08T10:14:37Z")
When I lived in Hawai`i, my roommate and I would occasioanlly consume certain recreationals and get a friend to drive us around the island while we, um, watched things happen. I had moved around a lot, so every few miles on one particular trip, I would occasioanlly point wildly out the window and say "I don’t mean to sound deja vu-ish, but _I used to live right over there!_ "
Hence, "I don’t mean to sound deja vu-ish but (insert sometihng here) entered our social lexicon for a while. That was 12, 13, 14, years ago, and when I saw the now-ex roommate recently I used it again and he couldn’t stop laughing. Ahh, good times, good times.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/8 "2006-03-08T10:18:21Z")
I invented the phrase: “I invented the phrase.”
I am thinking of making it a trademark.
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### Author:  [@DonCorleone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DonCorleone)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/9 "2006-03-08T12:09:24Z")
I invented the word ‘gullible’.
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### Author:  [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/10 "2006-03-08T12:49:25Z")
wow, i’ve had a bunch of things get popular after i’ve said em…
um, one i can think of right now is from the first austin powers movie. a buddy of mine had two younger brothers, and we’d pick on brother do jour and kep asking him if he was going to cry…and squirt some tears…this was…a couple years before austin powers came out, so i’m not sure if we got it before the script was even written, or if we both had divine intervention.
“barking spiders” as a euphemism for farting. i did that one, too. i never even thought it was very funny, but apparently some people did. i’m sure this one predates me, but the first time i ever heard it, i said it, and then people around me started saying it.
if i think of mine, i’ll post em, but it’s been many moons ago since i’ve thought of em.
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### Author:  [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/11 "2006-03-08T12:50:13Z")
Ahhh, perfect. I’d long been meaning to start a thread to see if my claim could be disproved. This will do nicely.
This would be roughly 1985, give or take a year. A group of us from school spent our free time hanging around on Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk, generally acting like a buncha no-good long-haired troublemakers.
There was a homeless man who we saw there every day – Abe Jones, the moaner of Pt. Pleasant boardwalk – he would spend all day walking the boardwalk, moaning quietly to himself. After awhile, he became our group’s personal charity case. When we were buying pizza or anything, an extra slice was generally picked up for 'ol Abe.
Now, I’m sure many groups of teens have large made-up vocabularies. I don’t think the fact that we could carry on long conversations with most of the words meaning nothing to an outside observer is anything new. Well, one day, my friend Jerry and I turned the old guy into a slang term. We decided that in honor of Abe, if you were really hurting for something, then you would be deemed as “jonesing” for it.
I remember being a little put off when people in our school who _weren’t_ in our click started using the term (“Hey! That’s _our_ word! Back off!”). That became amazement the following year when we started hearing kids from surrounding schools using it. It was a few years after that that it went to full-blown shock when I started hearing it in general use on television and such.
Did we invent a now-common slang word? Well, I know that at least locally it originated with us. Whether or not it came out somewhere as well, I can’t say. Can you? Anyone know of someone jonesing for anything before 1985?
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### Author:  [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/12 "2006-03-08T12:50:27Z")
forgive the typos. it’s morning. i don’t morning very well.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/13 "2006-03-08T13:14:12Z")
My wife, **Pepper Mill** , believes that she invented the term “ship’s cleavage”, refering to Marina Sirtis, Deanna Troi on Star Trek: TNG. Seeing a picture of her in the only Trek shirt that seemed to feature _decolletage_, she retorted “What’s she? Ship’s Cleavage?” She says that she heard the term constantly after that at conventions and elsewhere.
I don’t know if it’s true or not. It could be a case of Great Minds Thinking Alike (I know that several phrases I’ve coined on my own – Brooke Shields is The Creature from the Blue Lagoon – have turned up on the lips and in the writings of others), but Pepper’s convinced that this is her creation that has spread throughout fandom.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/14 "2006-03-08T13:24:52Z")
> [@Hal Briston](#):
>
> Ahhh, perfect. I’d long been meaning to start a thread to see if my claim could be disproved. This will do nicely.
[This site disagrees](http://www.lortie.net/blog/?p=156)
> [@](#):
>
> A quick Google search attributes the term to Ed Boland, a writer for the New York Times : the term comes from heroin addicts who frequented Great Jones Alley in New York City between Broadway and Lafayette.
>
> Just in case you wanted to know.
Daniel
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/15 "2006-03-08T13:27:06Z")
> [@Hal Briston](#):
>
> Anyone know of someone jonesing for anything before 1985?
[The Mavens](http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19961031) (Actually, this was pre-Maven, but I can’t remember who wrote the early ones…he was Random House’s dictionary editor at the time), put it in the 60s, meaning, specifically, a need for heroin until the 70s. (Wish I could dig up a better cite, but that’s the best I have access to.)
Now, I don’t THINK I did, but sometimes I could swear I coined the term ‘snark’, to mean…well…snark. I got funny looks the first time I said it, and I still get people who act like I did…
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### Author:  [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/16 "2006-03-08T13:34:32Z")
William Safire has a citation from 1970. [Link.](http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2003/05/11/205551)
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### Author:  [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/17 "2006-03-08T13:41:08Z")
There was a well spread joke when I was a kid:
“How do you sink a norwegian submarine?”
“You knock on the submarine’s door and the captain willl open up and say hello.”
When I was around eleven, I told my two friends a follow-up joke to this:
“How do you sink a russian submarine?”
“You knock on the submarine’s door and the captain will open up and say: ‘We’re not as foolish as the norwegians!’”
A few months later, I saw this joke, word by word as I had phrased it to my friends, in a magazine. I still have no idea how it got that far.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/18 "2006-03-08T13:41:53Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Now, I don’t THINK I did, but sometimes I could swear I coined the term ‘snark’, to mean…well…snark. I got funny looks the first time I said it, and I still get people who act like I did…
Lewis Carroll wtrote “The Hunting of the Snark” over a century ago. Some people tyhink the term was inspired by a misprint for “shark”. In any event, there was a missile called the Snark back in the 1950s. The name was also one suggestede and rejected for the Nostromo’s landing craft in the movie Alien. People have been talking about “snarkiness” for a long time, but it seems unrelateed to Carroll’s mythical beast.
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### Author:  [@35340](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/35340)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/19 "2006-03-08T14:08:13Z")
The first use of term in regards to “snarkiness” I read of was in the early eighties in a book by Gordon Korman - “I Want To Go Home” written in 81 (I guess I read it in 87?).
I didn’t start it on teh interweb, but I infected my friends with the use of the term “pancake” - as in “What the Pancake” and “you pancaking motherpancaker”. Helps that I control the dirty word filter at one place, too, so now it’s an official subsitution.
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2006, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-started-that-yeah-that-was-me/347517/20 "2006-03-08T14:27:31Z")
Must track down that book…prove to people I didn’t make the word up. \>\_\>
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