I don’t remember any specific example right now, and anyway they would translate badly.
But one of the things I do to keep my audience’s attention (I often have to teach or do presentations at work) is to take an existing sentence and twist it. I’ve also invented a few totally-new ones.
The first time Mom and me saw a TV newscaster use a Nava-ism, we laughed so hard we almost fell off our chairs, good thing they were big armchairs. She kept telling me “you’re famous! you’re famous, baby!” and I’d tell her “nah, I’m just a chunk of that famous author, Anonymous”. The specific newscaster is from a town about 50 miles from mine. It’s happened again, more than once.
I’ve also been known to run a word-by-word translation from Spanish to English in order to make my English-speaking-coworkers understand the language problems of our English-as-nth-language audiences. Some of those have made it into company lore; one coworker collected several of them and turned them into a little framed poster which he kept in his cubicle. Since he’s “more serious than a dishful of beans” (you see what I mean: that got translated directly from Spanish and although the words are English, the sentence is not), people had problems understanding that he understood the joke…
I was taking notes in a meeting when the client cut loose with an f-bomb diatribe that put everyone in shock. After a moment of silence I asked “Do you want to spell that with two g’s, or ck?” I can’t say it became that popular, but a few people did use it when something unpredictable happened.
My husband believes he may have coined a phrase at his workplace.
*
Nasty-gram*: a bitchy email. As in, “I just got a nasty-gram from Chris.”
Another seemingly unique phrase used at his workplace (but he is unaware of the origins) A Come to Jesus meeting: when you call an employee on the carpet and warn them to change their ways or else. As in, “I think it’s time we had a Come to Jesus meeting with Bob.”
Another word he did not coin which has become popular, crap-tacular: something which is incredibly crappy.
My father claims he invented the phrase “Have a good one.” (As in, “Have a good day.”)
I think he’s full of it, and he either heard it somewhere else and then forgot that he heard it somewhere else. Or, just as likely, it’s a basic kind of phrase that could have been independently “invented” many times by different people.
He says he invented the phrase in the mid-70s (say 1975-77 or thereabouts), and he was/is from Alberta, Canada.
So do any of you remember hearing “Have a good one” before about 1974?
Thanks much, LHoD, Tengu and Contrapuntal. It always seemed to me to be a bit too widespread in usage to not have deeper origins. Ah well. I still take credit for inventing it for my circle of friends.
I’m positive I started “whatever” in the mid 80’s. I’m not even kidding about that. I had never heard anyone say it before me. I used it as the most dismissive, snide word I could think of. After a while my friends started saying it too and then a few years later it was everywhere. I know it’s an idiotic thing to try to take credit for but there it is. I’m probably wrong anyway.
I’ve been trying to make the term “pharoah” happen for more than a year now. I think it could very feasibly replace “cool” or “rad”. “Oh wow, this suite is completely pharaoh! Look at the view!”
Yeah, it hasn’t happened.
I once dubbed myself “Captain Obvious” because, well, I found myself often stating the obvious. (For example, that explanation? Completely obvious.) Soon everybody around me was saying it, including a lot of people I never spoke to. Alas, Adam Sandler gets the credit for popularizing the phrase, and I guess it’s possible I saw it in Billy Madison.
oh no no no - “-ish” is New York City (specifically Brooklyn/Jewish) for “about then” and has been in use for many decades
Does this count? In RHPS
Janet: Besides, the owner of that castle might be a beautiful woman, and you might never come back.
Audience: You should **be ** so lucky!
Hate to burst your bubble, but the term “jones” denoting a serious drug habit and/or extreme need or desire was already a commonly used slang term at least as early as the early 70s. Cheech and Chong did a humorous song called “Basketball Jones” around 1974 or 75, IIRC.
when I was in grade school in the 60’s, and I wanted to express celebration in a sarcastic manner, I would point my index finger up and circle it around and say “I’m waving a flag”. Later, I noticed people used this motion in conjunction with “WhoopDeDoo” - so I don’t know if they were simultaneous, or if I actually started something.
In the early 80’s, while at my first Mensa conference, it was very late at night, or rather very early in the morning, and I said as I left the group to go back to my room to sleep “I’m turning into a pumpkin”. Now, I hear people say that (at the very late/very early hour) all the time. I ***know * ** I started that one.
I’m willing to bet that ‘baditude’ and ‘uncle-fucker’ are mine.
I was proud of baditude in the ‘80s, but now I’m filled with meh.
Uncle-fucker started as a result of me misquoting some of the lyrics in Alice’s Restaurant.
Also, and no one is going to be believe this: “the suck” as in “you are the suck” or now commonly “you are teh suck”. I had a Haitian friend in college that couldn’t say “you suck” for some strange reason. His odd syntax stuck in my head and I’ve used it ever since.
