To coin a phrase

Posted by ESC on April 13, 2003

In Reply to: Phrase origin posted by nikki on April 13, 2003

: Does anyone know the origins of 'coined the phrase'?
: Thanks !

This is all I could find:

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).

• To coin a phrase masakim 04/13/03