Who invented the phrase thats what she said

Add a Comment. View More Comments. The latest from KYM. This catchphrase pokes fun at people with preferred pronouns, like Mordecai of course. Photo Domino Effect. Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next. We see that you're using an ad-blocker! You must login or signup first! Already a memeber? Login Now! Don't have an account? The folks at the Today I Found Out YouTube channel have attempted, in the video above, to trace back through the history of your dad's favorite joke. In America, the earliest documented case of the phrase appears in a episode of Saturday Night Live.

In particular, it was Chevy Chase using the joke during "Weekend Update" on the show's first season. It was kept in popular use on Saturday Night Live through repeated uses in "Wayne's World" sketches and, later, the movie. However, the joke is a twist of a much older British phrase that tracks back more than a century to some point in the Edwardian period There, the line was "as the actress says to the bishop," in reference to actresses — whose company could be purchased after performances — confessing their sins to clergymen.

It gave normal office employees a license to perform, and it gave us television viewers a license to watch their odd lives and awful jokes. It's still hard to explain why a bad joke became ubiquitous, but perhaps we can start with its special structure. TWSS didn't craft sentences with sexual double meanings, as double entendre does in its classic form.

Rather, TWSS found double meanings in sentences that had already been crafted. These jokes snuck up on you. Here was a formula that required hardly any forethought and only a little cleverness. It was the do-it-yourself approach to sex jokes. This structure had an unexpectedly useful consequence. It forced us to listen to ourselves, to rethink our words and notice our own subtleties of phrase. It served as a reminder, however silly, that language is flexible, recyclable, and layered.

All viral jokes, from Chuck Norris to cat memes, fall limp eventually. The surprise wears off and boredom sets in. For example:. Back in these times, actresses often used prostitution to supplement their often low theatre income, with their flirtatious performances on stage acting as advertisements, or shop windows, to the onlooking gentlemen.

Due to clergymen subsequently spending a lot of time with actresses no, not like that! We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements.

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