I understand that “Laundry List” is supposed to mean some form of item-by-item enumeration, but where did the phrase originate? My laundry list looks like this:
When was laundry so complicated that you had to have a detailed list of instructions in order to do it correctly? Even when automation gave us the washing machine with wringer attachment, it still couldn’t have been that complicated.
This is purely WAG, but I’d always interpreted it as “list of items [that were/to be] taken to the (professional) laundry” – which would be fairly long and explicitly detailed.
Hadn’t thought of that. But isn’t laundering as a profession a fairly recent “invention”?
According to Dictionary.com, the term dates to the mid 50’s .
It’s much more recent than I would have guessed, according to Wordwizard:
If shopping list is really older, and it apparently is, the extension of meaning to laundry list is probably traceable to the rise of the laundromat (sometimes spelled laundramat), which was trademarked in 1947 but became widespread in the 1950s.
I think laundry list became the more popular expression because it rolls off the tongue so nicely. Say it: L-L-L-aundry L-L-L-ist. L-L-L-aundry. L-L-L-L-L-L-aundry.
Chinese laundries were common in San Francisco by the 1850s. Certainly at some point they would have used written lists to keep track of the laundry from different individuals (hence the shtick of “No tickee, no shirtee.”) Given this, the real surprise is how late the apparent first use of the term is.
Although the timing is right, who writes out a list of the clothes you are going to wash yourself in a laundromat? Laundry lists are usually obtained when you take your clothes to a commercial laundry or dry cleaner or have them done when you are staying at a hotel.
When I was living in apartments and taking my laundry to laundromats, every single one of them had a dry cleaning counter for clothing that wasn’t intended to be washed.
Completely anecdotal, but when I was doing research digging in city archives in Flanders, in a stack of items dealing with a particular chapel I found a sixteenth-century laundry list–a list of the items and what they were charged for cleaning: “1 chausible: 2 stuivers; 2 altar cloths at 2 st each” etc. I copied it down since it was cool, so I could dig it up if we want that level of documentation here.
One of my great-great-grandmothers came over from Ireland and worked here as a laundress in the 1860s. Not at all a recent invention.
If I sent out my laundry to a professional service, I’d make a list of things that needed attention. Things like “buttons on cloak need to be resewn, man’s casual grey striped shirt has rip on neck that needs fixing, green slacks have stain on left hem to be removed”, that sort of stuff. To me, a laundry list is a bunch of little details that need to be done as part of a larger task.
A laundry list is a list of items in the bundle that you send to the laundry.
I remember when linen etc was picked up from our house and returned a few days later.
The nearest example I can think of is the list of clothes you make out in a hotel before getting someone to collect them for cleaning etc.
As others have said, it dates back to the 1800s - at the least
OED has no cite from the 1950s in the modern sense. It does have this one, but that’s not really the sense we’re after:
Earliest cite for the sense we’re talking about is this one from Time:
I’m willing to bet that it was around in the 50s, I just haven’t seen a specific cite. Do any of the dictionaries quoted above give one?
Ok, since you all begged for it: actually from the 18th century and not the 16th, but anyway.
Holy Blood Chapel Archives register 5, piece 63:
“Notice of what the [somebody] of the Holy Blood have sent out for washing according to old specifications:
for one alb…10 stuivers
for one altar linen… 8 st.
for one band-cloth [a stole?]… 6 voertkins
for one “enedenty” cloth [something like that-- I have no idea what this is]… 3 st.
for one hand cloth… 6 vortkens
for one altar cloth… 3 st.
for one Holy Blood towelette…1/2 st.
for one long altar linen… 4 st.
for one pillow/cushion cover…1/2 st.
for one curtain… 12 st. [added in here: “te veel”: “too much”, heh]
for one head cloth… 3 st.
for one corporal … 3 st.
for one “preficatoon” [=purificator? another liturgical cloth]…1/2st.
for one “pallan” [pall cover?]… 6 st.
for one cover-strap [?]… 6 st.
for one communion cloth… 6 st.
for one small linen…1 st.
for one ciborium cloth… 3 st.”
I used to do my laundry in laundromats too, but many were not associated with a dry cleaners. In any case my point stands that laundry lists are more likely to be associated with commericial laundries or dry cleaners than self-service laundromats.
The fifties and probably much earlier.
I just did a search on Newspaper Archive.
Saturday, November 22, 1879 Saint Joseph, Michigan St. Joseph Herald.
Monday, October 01, 1900 Anaconda, Montana, Anaconda Standard
[
Thursday, December 11, 1913 Janesville, Wisconsin, The Janeville Daily Gazette
An ad for the Dunkirk Laundry in the Dunkirk Evening Observer for Wednesday, November 17, 1915 quotes prices for items under the headings Women’s Laundry List, Men’s Laundry List, and Household Laundry List.
A short story called “The Laundry List,” by Jessie Douglass, whose plot revolved around the title item was printed in a number of papers in 1929.
There were 264 hits before 1930, some of them false hits because their character recognition software is awful. (I corrected many of the more obvious errors to make the quotes readable.) I didn’t go through all the pages, but there was nothing earlier than 1879 in hits from 50-100. There are numberous hits before 1900, though.
These all seem to be literal uses of laundry list, so maybe the 1950s is when it started being used in a metaphorical sense. It’s easy to find metaphorical uses from that time.
Tuesday, June 10, 1941 Warren, Pennsylvania, Warren Times-Mirror
Thursday, April 20, 1950 Walla Walla, Washington, Walla Walla Union Bulletin
I used them on a regular basis when I was in the Army. See DA Form 2886 (PDF).
Looks like Exapno Mapcase beat me to it.
The fact is that a lot of the origin dates for words and phrases in the standard reference sources are wildly inaccurate. Now that databases of old books, newspapers and so forth are going online, it’s getting fairly easy to track many of these things in ways that were never possible before.
I’ve personally traced on more accurate origins of a variety of terms and phrases – including “say uncle,” “bloody mary” (the drink), and so forth – on my own and in association with an author specializing in words and their histories, and so far the experts have just been wrong on most of them.
Doesn’t really give one a lot of confidence in the opinions of experts in general, but at least the future of research in this and other fields looks a lot brighter.
Reference Laundries being a recent phenonomem they were a common institution in ancient Rome.