6 Words and Phrases Brought to You by Hollywood

Over the years, Hollywood has brought some unforgettable moments to the big and small screens, from recreating the sinking of the RMS Titanic in James Cameron’s 1997 hit film to Don Draper’s striking Kodak carousel pitch in Mad Men. It’s also responsible for introducing many oft-used words and idioms into the lexicon. Here are some of our favorite Hollywood slang terms, many of which have origins that might seem like the ultimate plot twist.

Cut to the Chase

It should come as no surprise that this turn of phrase originated in showbiz. We’ll get to the point, though—which, incidentally, is what the phrase actually means: This idiom is a throwback to the silent films of the early 20th century, when directors who couldn’t rely on dialogue to move a plot forward would simply … well, you know. It crossed over to casual usage circa the mid-1950s when a journalist used it in his memoir, and to this day, cut to the chase is commonly used whenever someone wants to speed things along.

Blockbuster

Although Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) is widely considered the first summer blockbuster, the term blockbuster is much older than that. It first appeared in the mid-20th century and was used in two ways: Initially, in reference to WWII-era bombs that were powerful enough to obliterate a whole city block, and subsequently, as a metaphor in the U.S. to describe something explosively shocking. By the 1950s, Hollywood co-opted it as a label for flicks that were a major success at the box office, which is how it’s still used to this day.

And around the same time as Hollywood was making blockbuster its own, the term also took on a less positive meaning: It was used to refer to “a real estate agent or broker who persuades (esp. white) homeowners to sell property cheaply due to the fear of people of another ethnic or socio-economic group (esp. black people) moving into the neighborhood, in order to profit by reselling the property at a higher price (often to a member of the incoming group),” per the Oxford English Dictionary.

Jump the Shark

Audiences were none too pleased in 1977 when legendary cool guy Arthur Fonzarelli (a.k.a. the Fonz) legit jumped over a shark while rocking a leather jacket and water skis on the hit ABC sitcom Happy Days (1974–1984). For some, it signaled the beginning of the end for the critically acclaimed show, which is how the idiom—officially coined in 1980s by writer/radio personality Jon Hein and his college roommate Sean Connolly—is used in modern times. (Hein explained that the duo was talking about how they could pinpoint when a favorite show was languishing: “That’s easy,” Connolly said. “It was when Fonzie jumped the shark.”) It’s since spilled over from Hollywood, and can be applied to any attention-grabbing stunt that doesn’t quite land the way its architects thought it would.

Gaslight

Under modern usage, gaslighting someone refers to psychologically manipulating them over an extended period of time until they begin to distrust their own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of reality. The term owes its roots to the 1938 play Gas Light (and to subsequent adaptations, including the 1944 film Gaslight, which starred Ingrid Bergman), wherein a woman is slowly deceived by her husband into believing she’s going insane, with the flickering gaslights around their home used to symbolize her declining mental state. By at least 1956, it had entered American parlance as a verb, meaning, “To manipulate (a person) by psychological means into questioning his or her own sanity.”

Boob Tube

Depending on who you ask, we’re still living in the Golden Age of Television—a period marked by an exceptional number of high-quality shows—but the boob tube, as it has come to be known, wasn’t always so celebrated. According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, boob tube was first used in the U.S. back in the early 1960s as another word for television, but with a derogatory bite: The term boob was commonly used then to describe a “fool [or] idiot,” but could also suggest something “stupid [or] foolish.” In the UK, boob is synonymous with “an error, a blunder.” Ipso facto, boob tube was often evoked by detractors of seemingly low-quality television shows to cast shade on the entire medium.

Embiggen

From d’oh! to dorkus malorkus, the English language owes a lot to The Simpsons, particularly when it comes to made-up neologisms—like the Springfield-originated verb embiggen, which was added to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary in 2018.

The word dates back more than 20 years, to a seventh-season episode of The Simpsons titled “Lisa the Iconoclast.” In it, the students of Springfield Elementary School are treated to Young Jebediah Springfield, an educational film that depicts the early days of the founder of their great town. His secret? “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” Though the rarity of the word led even Edna Krabappel to question its authenticity (fellow teacher Ms. Hoover assures her that “it’s a perfectly cromulent word,” a reference to yet another piece of The Simpsons lexicon), writer Dan Greaney actually coined the phrase even before the episode.

Amazingly, it turns out that Jebediah Springfield may have been very hip to the times when he used the phrase after all; the word was also used by author C.A. Ward in Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc., which was published in 1884.

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