Who coined the phrase “Coined the phrase”? From Justin.

Wow, Justin. That is indeed an infrequently asked question. Unfortunately, it is, like most origin questions, difficult, if not impossible to answer accurately. However, I think I’ve found the answer.

The origin of the idea seems to date all the way back to (are you ready?) 1589! Some poet named George Puttenham wrote a work called “English Poesie” and in volume 3, page 259 (apparently somebody read that far) he babbles on about “Young schollers not halfe well studied…” who “seeme to coigne fine wordes out of the Latin”.

The actual phrase “Coined the phrase” didn’t appear in writing until 1940, and therefore must have been in use before that. So the actual phrase remains “Origin unknown”, but the true mastermind behind the idea was Sir George Puttenham, the long-winded, 16th century poet.

I hope that helps.

The only resource I was able to find on the subject was from “TakeOurWord.com” And parts of this post were taken verbatim, some parts were changed, and some parts actually came from me.

As always, I welcome any question you’ve been pondering and has never been answered (Except origin questions… I don’t like them anymore). Simply leave a comment on this post with your question, and I’ll do my best to answer it.

You can also check out the Complete IFAQ (InFrequently Asked Questions) page, or my Old IFAQ page.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2005 at 11:53 am and is filed under Babblings, IFAQ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.