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#1
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Comment: According to the author at this site, the first time anyone user
the expression, "You're toast!" to mean wasted or destroyed, was Bill Murray in 1984's Ghostbusters: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/06...out-the-movie/ The New York Times claims the earliest anyone said it was 1987: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/20/ma...-is-toast.html So: Is Bill Murray the author of the use of the word 'toast' to describe someone being in trouble? |
#2
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According to the OED, sort of:
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#3
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I seem to remember it from before Ghostbusters; I had always thought it came from football announcers (at least that's where I remember it from). When a reciever beats a defensive back, getting open to catch a pass for a long gain, announcers have long described that as "burning" the defensive back. Somewhere along the line, somebody said, "He's burnt like toast," and that got shortened to "He's toast."
That's my completely unsupported, vaguely remembered anecdote, and I'm sticking to it! |
#4
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I first heard it in Germany in the mid-80s, right around Ghostbusters time.
I always thought it was a morphing of the German "tot", meaning dead. Never actually thought it would be anything other than that. ![]() Goes to show how "alternate sources" and "possible roots" can be derived hundreds of years later in other instances. |
#5
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If I thought of it at all, I always assumed it was another take on "roast" or "roasted", as in verbally attacking someone. "He's roasted" somehow became "He's toast."
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#6
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I have a print shorter OED from 1955. It doesn't give that meaning as such, but it does give "to have (a person) on toast" as slang for "to have at one's mercy", which might be related. It doesn't give a date or location for that usage.
I could swear that I've heard "to be toast" in the sense of "to be finished off, rendered dead and/or unable to function" considerably before the 1980's; but it's possible my memory's not accurate about that. It seems to make a sort of sense in my head that I'm having trouble spelling out here -- something to do with being finished off in the sense of cooked, re-cooked, and ready to be eaten. |
#7
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