Photo: Dag Terje Filip EndresenI’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
Mantonat asked:
Any idea as to where the phrase “couch potato” originated?
The Oxford English Dictionary says that “potato” here is apparently a pun based on “boob tuber,” but it could also be a simple association with the slang use of “vegetable.” The earliest citation for “couch potato” in the OED is the Los Angeles Times in 1979.
Drew asked:
Was “Statistics are like ladies of the night … Once laid out you can do anything with them” really Mark Twain?
No.
Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?
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Eric M. Jones, Thanks for your fine work antedating various quotes and phrases. Sometimes dates in the Google Books database can be misleading as you know. I think that the date on the book “Cholesterol Cures” is not 1958. If you search for “1990″ within the book you find sentences such as: In fact, the fat content of retail beef declined 27 percent during 1990 and 1991, …”
In fact, the Google Books database has another copy of the book with a publication date of 1996:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1KgB6JhhNKoC&
One technique for crosschecking the date of a book involves querying the WorldCat database. The earliest edition of Cholesterol Cures by Richard Trubo from Rodale Press appears to be 1996.
@13 and 15. Fred and Garson…
Yes, I am well aware and went to some other sources like:
http://www.biblio.com/details.php?cx=330256662&aid=bkfndr
This still doesn’t settle the issue as well as finding a real copy, but it sure looks reasonable. Sometimes people re-publish the same basic book in several rewrites, so checking is important.
Cholesterol Cures: From Almonds…..Richard Trubo
Bookseller: Seashellbooks.com, Inc. (US)
Format/binding: Hardcover
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN 10: 087596284X
ISBN 13: 9780875962849
Publisher: Yankee Books
Date published: 1958
@16, Eric,
But, even accepting that the original edition was published in 1958 (*), the later material cited in @15, means that at the very least, it was updated in later editions, meaning that there’s no way to say if that particular use of “couch potato” was in the original edition, or one from the 1990s. The off-handed way he uses it sould suggest that it’s a common term to the reader — not a new term that he’s introducing.
(*) Amazon list 38 book written by Richard Trubo (mostly on health topics, so they’re all probably by the same “Richard Trubo”), the earliest of which in from 1973. So, if this is from 1958, it would mean that he wrote one book, took 15 years off, and then started cranking out a book a year)
@17–James Curran:
All true; and yes, I have my doubts. Looks like somebody like me has to buy the book.
Small price for fame and glory.
“No.”
Really? That passes for an answer?
@10: I hypothesize that Grenier was using his own words to present a summary of Orwell’s viewpoint.
@12: … Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism” …
@14: … Kipling’s “Tommy” …
Grenier was familiar with both Orwell and Kipling.[1]
It could be that what he wrote is an eloquent paraphrase of both.
A research question is “where did Grenier get the pieces?”
Orwell uses “rough men” once in “Down and out in Paris and London”.
http://books.google.com/books?id=HxojMJmRcnYC&lpg=PT146&dq=%22rough%20men%22%20inauthor%3Aorwell&pg=PT146#v=onepage&q=%22rough%20men%22%20inauthor:orwell&f=false
Kipling does not use “rough men” (per books.google.com).
Google books reports “About 17,900 results” for “rough men” up to April 1993 with any author.
[1]“The Uniforms That Guard Us”
Richard Grenier — May 1981
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-uniforms-that-guard-usrdquo/
Thanks for the valuable responses from Fred, James, and Eric: The fact that the Biblio.com database lists an edition from Yankee Books of Cholesterol Cures with a publication date of 1958 is intriguing. Yankee Books is a registered trademark of Rodale Press and Rodale Press published the 1996 edition of the book. Searching with the ISBN 13: 9780875962849 leads to a database of alibris.com that also asserts the existence 1958 Yankee Books edition of Cholesterol Cures
Within Google Books it is possible to look at the snippet containing “couch potato” in the collection of scans dated 1958. Here is text from the snippet:
But some studies suggest that being a hard-core couch potato can be hard on the coronary arteries — and the cholesterol level. It’s not hard to see why. The more sitcoms, miniseries and movies of the week that you take in say experts the more likely you are to …
Evidence suggests that the word “miniseries” was not used for television programming in 1958. The earliest instance in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1972. (The OED updated the entry and performed their search for miniseries in January 2010.) So, the text immediately surrounding “couch potato” appears to be more modern than 1958. This is not too surprising because the collection of scans for Cholesterol Cures that are assigned the year 1958 by Google Books really belong to an edition published sometime after 1990.
If the 1958 edition actually exists and if it contains “couch potato” than the immediately adjacent text was rewritten for later editions. It is also possible that the 1958 edition does not exist (an artifact of faulty database data) or the 1958 edition exists but omits the term “couch potato”.
“Gravy train.”
Where did that come from?