Colm O'Regan: Let's celebrate our little phrases. Who knows where they might end up?

Colm O'Regan: "Who was the first to tell the shopkeeper, “If it doesn’t scan, you have to give it for free?” I bet they took the rest of the day off. I know I do." Picture: Chani Anderson.

Technically, this is not a column about The Traitors. But it’s hard to avoid. It seeps into every conversation like doubt into the mind of a faithful. But whatever happens in The Traitors next, it’s been a good couple of weeks for “It is what it is”.

It’s the go-to phrase when a traitor or faithful has to say something without saying anything at all. Except for Oyin — it is whatever SHE says it is. If The Traitors went on any longer, Oyin would eventually be voting out the faithful because they were going to become traitors anyway.

“It is what it is” is a cousin of “we are where we are”, which arrived in Ireland in 2010 along with the IMF. They are both tautophrases — saying the same thing twice — giving something meaning by saying it twice. IIWII exploded in popularity due to Love Island, but New York Times writer William Safire traced it to at least the 1940s. 

And if you’re a fan of the 13th-century Persian mystic Rumi, who wrote a book called Fihi Ma Fihi which translates as “It is What It Is”. So ‘it’ has been ‘it’ for some time now.

I’m always fascinated by who was the first to coin a phrase that we take for granted. It’s like being the first person to come up with cupholders. There isn’t the same research done for We Are Where We Are, although you may remember WAWWA was suddenly everywhere in 2010 when the IMF came. It was used to avoid questions about how we got where we are.

“What can I do you for?” the classic witty response. They’ve switched around the ‘what can I do for you?’ to imply they are about to swindle you. Banter!

Where did it start? I use Google nGram. A search engine that searches every single printed source between 1500 and 2022. It’s an imperfect tool — shur aren’t we all? It mightn’t accurately reflect spoken life but lookit, it is what it is.

“What can I do you for?” was in publications as diverse as Popular Science in 1941 and Motorboating in June 1954. It has boomed since the 1980s, maybe as shop owners got more wisecracking. But has tailed off recently. Are we meeting fewer wisecracking shopkeepers as shopping moves online? Are the “do you fors” a dying breed?

I wonder who was the very first. Did they know they’d created a 100-year phrase? Every little throwaway, unremarkable little joke must have started somewhere. Who was the first to say, “if I could just get your autograph there”, when looking for you to sign it. I wonder who that was. Did they congratulate themselves? Did they think this is just a throwaway thing? Did they realise they were allowing a million couriers to break the ice with a million customer?

Who was the first to tell the shopkeeper, “If it doesn’t scan, you have to give it for free?” I bet they took the rest of the day off. I know I do. Or how about this stone wall classic: when I’m in a restaurant and I absolutely clean my plate and they ask me how was the meal? Get this… I say, “No, I didn’t enjoy it at all!” 

Even though I’ve completely wiped the plate clean. We. All. Laugh. Every time I do it I’m sure I’m the first person ever. Sometimes we know exactly where it came from. 

“As the actress said to the bishop” is supposed to have come from a conversation in a garden between Lilly Langtry — the actress — and the Bishop of Worcester — the bishop. It involved a double entendre around a rose thorn and the word ‘prick’.

So celebrate your little phrases. Who knows where they might end up? But don’t force it. What will be will be.

• Colm’s eighth book, Gallivanting With Words, about the joy of Hiberno English, is out on October 30.