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Coined a phrase

Posted by ESC on May 09, 2003

In Reply to: Who coined the phrase "coined the phrase?" posted by Govenah on May 09, 2003

: anybody know?

I don't.

COIN A PHRASE, TO - "To invent a phrase, which if it is apt or imaginative may gain currency, and become popular generally. Today this phrase is mostly used ironically to accompany a banal remark or cliché. 'Who, to coin a phrase, would have thought of meeting you?' Ngaio Marsh: Hand in Glove, ch iv " From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable revised by Adrian Room (HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 1999, Sixteenth Edition).

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