Ever wondered how those nifty catchphrases start out? Why do we use the cliches that we do?
Over at News from the Great Beyond there has been Musings on Coining a Phrase.
One night – and I don’t recall if this was a “coffee at Denny’s” night or a “wine coolers at the park” night or a “diet Coke at my house” night – my friend Pablo and I were pondering the act of coining a phrase.
You know, those hip sayings that get made popular by a movie or recording – they have to have originated somewhere. Someone, somewhere had to be the first to say it, and their friends heard it and picked up on it, and somewhere along the line it was overheard by a writer who plugged it into a script, and next thing you know everyone’s saying it.
We wanted to coin a phrase. We figured when it ended up in a movie script, we’d have accomplished something. But it needed to be unique enough that we’d recognize it as being “our phrase” when it cropped up as the next new hot thing. So we thought long and hard, and finally decided on a sufficiently unique saying.
I’ll beat you like a blue moose on Thursday.
I reckon it’s a phrase that is worthy of a good hearing. Why not try slipping it into conversation over the coming week?
Of course it’s not a new concept. Australian comedian Adam Hills had a similar idea and came up with the phrase Go you big red fire engine. He started using it at all his shows and whenever he appeared in a media interview.
Have a look at this Google search on his phrase and I think you’ll be surprised.
I’m now working out a way of using I’ll beat you like a blue moose on Thursday in my radio programme tomorrow.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
UPDATE: I’ve managed to use it on-air once so far.
I’d love to hear some suggestions of how to slip the phrase into conversation. My suggestion is that the next time someone challenges you to a game of something, you reply, “Sure, I’ll beat you like a blue moose on Thursday”.
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Good luck with that, Rodney! If I have the opportunity, I will try to use the phrase today. No promises but I’ll see what I can do.
LOL… thank you so much for helping in the effort 🙂 I will have to e-mail Pablo and tell him the “blue moose” is spreading internationally.
God bless!
I don’t know, maybe it says more about me than anything else, but I always thought the phrase referred to a more violent activity (rather than competition). I.e.: “Hey, what does this button do?” “Hey, if you go *anywhere near that button* I’ll beat you like a blue moose on Thursday”