Rather far from coining it, it was surely used in many ordinary texts such as works of fiction , books, you know, back in time from 1700s etc…
1647 use of “overlord” .. its used as just a general word meaning boss, understandable by anyone, a school child… so its use in 1900s film ,tv is not notable, they aren’t coining it, its an ordinary word required to describe all various feudal /medieval situations …
Yes, the word itself is very old, dating back almost to Old English. The OED gives the earliest use of the word in a citation from circa 1175. I believe the question in this thread is about the trope phrase “I for one welcome our new X overlords”. I can see no evidence for the claim that the phrase was used in any adaptation of Well’s Empire of the Ants. From the evidence I see, it was indeed coined by The Simpsons’ writers. It’s such a goofy phrase, I can’t imagine it being used in any serious context.
Anybody remember the Evil Overlord List? It’s a list of things the author wouldn’t do if ever became an E.O. It’s from so far back in the early days of the Web that one entry is “any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.”
Relevance?
I believe it’s this:
We come from the land of the ice and snow ♪
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
How soft your fields so green
Can whisper tales of gore ♫
Of how we calmed the tides of war
We are your overlords
But yeah, not particuarly relevant to the phrase.
The relevance is that it predates a number of the other examples cited above.
And Adam saying “Madam, I’m Adam” also predates a number of the other examples. Which is completely irrelevant, because, like the Immigrant Song, it doesn’t include the phrase in question.
You’ve gotta read past the title of the thread. It’s not where did the phrase “overlord” originate; it’s where did a specific phrase using that word originate. That specific phrase is in the original post.
The word predates the Zep song by hundreds of years.