A Deeper Look At Bad Lingo: When Did We Start Throwing Up In Our Mouths A Little Bit, And Why?
We were so perversely gratified by your response to our rundown of Blog Media Clich s, yo. But we were left asking ourselves a tough question: did we screw up a little bit (ha!) when describing one of our gripes? If you'll recall, we kicked the already-down "[negative experience, situation, or description]; I just threw up a little bit in my mouth." But judging from commenters' responses, which ranged from the tasteful "I think I just shit in my pants a little" to the downright debonair "I just came in my mouth a little bit," we didn't even hate correctly: the phrase is, OBVS (btw, continuing to use obvs forever to save valuable typing seconds), "I just threw up in my mouth a little bit."
From whence did it come, though? It's important to us to know, for some reason. So after the jump, we make like William Safire, if William Safire was bludgeoned over the head repeatedly with a blunt object, and explore the etymology of the phrase. (That's not the one with insects, is it?)
The answer was simple to find, and would have been even easier for us to suss out if we'd ever seen the movie Dodgeball. Apparently there's a scene in the movie wherein Christine Taylor's character receives unwanted advances from Ben Stiller's character, to which she responds with the now-classic line. After the movie's release in 2004, the phrase spread across the internet like something ickier than wildfire. Gonorrhea. No, more irritating. It spread like a combination of head lice and gonorrhea at the same time. Here are some of the most popular usages, randomly selected from the 10,400 available examples.
- Generically commenting on a gross photo.
- Being geekily opposed to something.(ex: a statue of a comic book character.)
- Finding out who designed the Sacajawea dollar.
- Bemoaning the undesirability of a celebrity pairing.
- Writing a made-up quote in a low-rent version of the Onion.
- Declaring the phrase itself to be over.
- All right, that concludes our little Safire-gasm. Back to your regularly scheduled Gawker-y goodness!
- Earlier: Bad Lingo: Blog Media Clich s