Common Phrases That Common Folk Don’t Know ‘The Simpsons’ Invented
A cromulent command of Simpsons phrases embiggens the smallest lexicon.
Modern linguistic scholars believe that as many as 1,700 English words marked their first recorded use in the works of William Shakespeare. By that count, no single human being has contributed more to the pages of the English dictionary than The Bard, but we should still give some special consideration to The Bald. Homer Simpson, his family and his neighbors have given a great deal to the vocabulary and vernacular of the common, modern English-speaker whether they know it or not, even though the average reading level in Springfield probably isn’t much higher than what’s required to read the back of a box of Krusty-O’s.
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Over on Simpsons Twitter, fans recently discussed the surprising number of commonly used English phrases (as well as some Spanish ones) that are only now common because some writer on The Simpsons needed a new and hilarious way to describe French people, their feelings toward concession and their love of dairy:
Back in 2018, Merriam-Webster included the word “embiggen,” meaning “to enlarge,” first spoken by Jedidiah Springfield in the classic Simpsons Season Seven episode “Lisa the Iconoclast,” in their batch of annual additions to the official English dictionary. Then, late last year, the good dictionarians legitimized the word “cromulent,” or “acceptable,” from the same scene of the same Simpsons episode.
Time will tell if Matt Groening and The Simpsons have more words to add to the official lexicon of the English language, but, culturally, the Simpsons-originated phrases that are now uttered on a daily basis by a great many people, not all of whom are necessarily Simpsons fans, cement the series as the single most linguistically consequential comedy show of our era, and, possibly, in all of history.
What a time to be alive.
