I’ve always wondered how phrases like that get propagated without being on tv or on the radio. And where could it have been printed where everybody read it?
Mah dearest Chanille, ah do so miss your face, and partaking of lemonade on your Pappy’s verandah.
“Wah is hail”, as ah’ve heard here in the Union camp on a daily basis, and barely a fortnightly unfolds without General Grant stumbling out of his Smokin’ Tent shouting “A Perfect Storm!”
He seems to want it to become a common phrase, and to that end I send it along to you, in hopes that you and your ladies-in-waiting will aid the war effort by describing the situation here, not as a heck of a how-d’ya-do or a fine kettle of fish, but as A Perfect Storm.
I remain,
your Ob†. Servant,
Private Josiah Sprout
21st Illinois Volunteer Regiment,
guarding the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad
If you’re at least 30-something years old you might remember in the olden days people used to communicate by making sounds with their mouths instead of texting.
Okay…
Came from a 1823 opera- first.
1916 book. Also kinda in an ancient greek comedy.
Go full throttle, go full bore, go full out.
You talkin’ to me? - Taxi Driver
Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.—Bette Davis
What a dump!—Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor
Taxi Driver was quoting The Twilight Zone.
In The Twilight Zone, “Are you talkin’ to me?” sounds like a genuine, timid question. In Taxi Driver, that same line crackles with tough-guy bravado, transforming it into an iconic, confrontational challenge.
In a similar vein, Bette Davis first delivered “what a dump" in Beyond the Forest, though her version was relatively understated. It was Elizabeth Taylor, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, who vamped it up and transformed the line into the iconic line we remember today.
At the time I first heard ‘shits and giggles’ I was out of the loop socially, not talking to people much in general except about work. I wasn’t going to hear it on TV or see it in print anywhere unless maybe in the National Lampoon, hardly saw any movies at the time. That kind of stuff was spread person to person back then. It sounded like a schoolyard phrase to me at the time, didn’t expect it to be as commonly said as it was in the 90s and later. Or maybe it’s was used more then and now than I know.
The phrase was common before those films, though.
True. The phrase was common. It’s the inflection that makes it unique and memorable. Same as “I’ll be back” and many others.
“Shits and giggles” sounds like a naughtier way of saying “something else” and giggles, but what other two word phrases for “just for the fun of it” are there?
Hookers and blow?
“Kicks and giggles”. It was the churchie substitute for “for the Hell of it”. So, of course, it was altered in the schoolyard to make it naughty again.
I Googled it, and it’s much more pervasive than I realized.
“Sorry about that”. It was what Maxwell Smart said (usually to the Chief) when his bumbling led to a plate of spaghetti falling in someone’s lap or some similar embarrassment. It quickly became a national catchphrase, always said in the singsongy way that Max said it.
Now I still hear it, often said in that same intonation by young people who couldn’t possibly know where it came from.
And an Allan Sherman song:
More recognized as “Sorry about that Chief”. Still mainly by those who have seen the series. Said often in the 60s. The Cone of Silence is another once well known and well appreciated bit from the show but isn’t a simple catch phrase. The shoe phone and related concepts were big too and real shoe phones eventually became real as a sort of gag gift thing.
“Would you believe…” is also from Get Smart
Along with “Missed it by that much!” and “That’s the second-biggest [whatever] I’ve ever seen!”