Benjamin Dreyer: I can't just this second think of another weird one-off phrase that has so embedded itself in the English language like "jump the shark" has. I'd think that most people would have no idea whence it came had they not been specifically told.

I can't just this second think of another weird one-off phrase that has so embedded itself in the English language like "jump the shark" has. I'd think that most people would have no idea whence it came had they not been specifically told.

I'm sure I said it any number of times before it occurred to me to wonder why I was saying such a weird thing and then to seek out its origin.

“Drink the koolaid” always makes me wince

IT WAS FLAVOR AID. Sorry, can't help myself.

Big drink doesn’t want the truth getting out.

I dunno, I think Big Drink isn't the biggest fan, whereas Little Drink be like "... we definitely didn't mask the cyanide flavor!!!"

... I also came for the Flavor Aid commentary

Yeah, when I was in SF in the 90s, there were still people around who had lost loved ones in Guyana, so I never have liked that phrase either. (And not for the pedantic "BUT IT WAS ACTUALLY FLAVORADE!" reason.) Those people were murdered.

Yes same, it’s so ghoulish and a misrepresentation of what happened to those people, which actually involved a lot of coercion and gaslighting.

Me Too. Jim Jones. Awful.

Yeah, that’s a cold one for sure. Also, it’s a little archaic now, but if you’ve ever heard anyone say “ in like Flynn,” it refers to the famous actor skating on statutory rape charges.

I don’t think I've ever heard it but gross!

It’s an idiom from the Olden Tymes of the 20th Century

I'm guessing a reference to Errol Flynn?

it predates errol flynn but became associated with him

See, I’m not clear on whether this is a Jim Jones reference or an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test reference. And I prefer to think the latter.

Mocking the event that ended 1000 lives with a pithy reference such as this is just ghoulish. “Box cutter” will never become a punchline.

"to stan" in the sense of "obsessively fan-boy/girl over" is a similar case

I *just* looked that up last week and was shocked. I guess I'd assumed it was some sort of trimming of "stand up for."

Like I didn't realize that "ship" comes from "relationship," not "worship."

I just realized that it connects with socc-er. I'm not sure which came first, ship or shipper. It may have been simultaneous.

As I recall, those overly obsessed on alt.tv.x-files with Mulder & Scully hooking up were called Relationshippers, then shippers, and the concept of shipping came from that.

I got it from the Buffy message boards back in the day. I had no idea it started with X-Files.

Wikipedia agrees:

That's definitely the context I first heard it in.

wait I thought it was a portmanteau of stalker + fan?!

Nope, just this song

Eminem - Stan (Long Version) ft. Didoyoutu.be REMASTERED IN HD! Music video by Eminem performing Stan. YouTube view counts pre-VEVO: 3,965,564. (C) 2002 Aftermath Entertainment/Interscope Records #Eminem #Stan #Remastered #Vevo #HipHop #OfficialMusicVideo #Dido

bsky.app/profile/mdaw...

I guess that makes stalker + fan the backronym version of a portmanteau??

Nope!

Stan (song) - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

I guess that makes stalker + fan the backronym version of a portmanteau??

so then - a “manteautrop” perhaps?

Perhaps it’s why the story’s protagonist was named Stan in the first place?

_precisely_ correct-- somehow, both usages feel right even before you know where they came from

I had to explain this one to my WoW guild a while back, and they were flabbergasted.

Maybe Catch-22, which is itself a sort of accident. I've read that Heller's book was originally titled Catch-18, but to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's Mila 18, a S&S editor changed it to Catch-22. Funny to me that something so ingrained in our language was arrived at more or less by whim.

That S&S editor chose a really good number. Catch-22 really sings.

Here's a nice little Paris Review essay on the title, written by Heller's daughter, Erica.

Catch-18 - The Paris Reviewwww.theparisreview.org When Dad started Catch-22 in 1953, it was called Catch-18. Later, he and his young editor, Robert Gottlieb, changed the title because Leon Uris’s novel had usurped the number with Mila 18. I can remem...

Doesn't Gottlieb talk about this in a scene from "Turn Every Page," the marvelous documentary about his relationship with Caro?

And also in his memoir Avid Reader

It’s funny, on the one hand I revere Gottlieb as an editor but a) there are at least 2 women editors (Sophie Wilkins, Judith Jones) whom he treated pretty terribly at Knopf, and he also was mean to my fact-checker which is an unforgivable sin

Happily, 30 years at RH netted me almost zero of those "how lovely of you to laud this person, they're a jerk" instances, though there are a scant handful of highly esteemed authors whose names, mentioned in my presence, cause my eyeballs to revolve.

But the agent who repped Heller insists that “catch-22” was HER title, to commemorate her birthday (October 22). Gottlieb got the last word on this one, though.

I'm afraid I just outed myself as someone who didn't read the book!

I can still mentally hear the actress saying “catch-a-twen-ty-two” in the movie in her Italian accent.

Catch-18 feels like an incursion from a less-poetic dimension.

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