Couch Potato

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lynn calling from Monterra, California.

Hello, Lynn. What’s going on?

Hi, Lynn.

I was watching a show on dog rescue, and so they placed the dogs in actual homes to evaluate the dog’s temperament. And then they showed the dogs back at the kennel, and they had signs on the cages saying what kind of temperament the dog had.

And they showed this one dog all curled up, and the sign said couch potato. And I was wondering where the phrase came from, because I use it, and I’ve heard it as long as I can remember. And I think it’s a great phrase, but I was curious as to the origins.

Was he lumpy and brown and had lots of eyes?

No, actually, he was like a lab.

Okay. So by couch potato, Lynn, you guessed that they meant what?

That he just liked to lie around on the couch?

Yeah, that he was a dog who would be just as soon spend his time laying on the couch hanging out than anything else. So an easygoing dog who didn’t require a lot of exercise or attention.

And you want to know where couch potato comes from. Well, here’s the story. It’s been reported in many places. One of those is in the book called Predicting New Words by Alan Metcalf, who is a linguist and lexicographer. And he’s a dialect scholar as well.

And in this book, Predicting New Words, he talks about couch potato and its history. And the short version of his story is that there was a group of men from Southern California who used to get together to watch television. And this is in the 1960s or 70s.

And so one of the fellows made a joke on the fact that they were all sitting around watching the boob tube. And he called one of the people watching the boob tube a tuber. And then later, because a tuber is a potato, he called them potatoes. So somebody sitting on the couch watching the tube is a couch potato.

You see the logic there, how it goes from boob tube to tuber to potato? Well, and fast forward a few years, and these fellows kind of became, you know, a quasi-official group of men. And they entered a float in the Pasadena Duda Parade. And this was, what, 1979, I believe it was.

And a story ran in a local paper about the parade, showed their float. They were interviewed, I believe, by the media, and people got to see their float, which featured, ta-da, couch potatoes, and that kind of was the launching point of that word.

These guys, they put out books, they did interviews, they had T-shirts and bumper stickers, and a whole kit and caboodle. They made a big deal out of the term that they came up with, couch potato.

Yeah, they trademarked it.

How did I miss this?

How did you miss it?

You know, I’m 55, so, you know, I should have, I don’t know how I meant all this.

Lynn, it’s probably to your credit.

Oh, I’m so bummed. I really would have.

No, I’m serious. I think it’s probably to your credit because basically they got a lot of attention, made some money off of it, and it’s all goofy anyway. But I think the other reason that the term really succeeded is not just because these guys made a big deal about this term that they coined. It’s because we needed it.

We needed a term for people who are lounging around on the couch doing nothing but watching television and drinking beer or whatever, you know. We needed a term for the sluggards of the world besides sluggard, you know, something new.

And the term is so successful now that I don’t think any dictionary gives it its trademark, even though it was trademarked. I think it’s completely generic, and it’s so generic that you can do things like call a dog a couch potato. And, of course, there’s the variant mouse potato as well, which is somebody who kind of lies around using the computer.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, mouse potato, click potato, I’ve seen. Tons of, yeah. Lots of potatoes. It spawns a lot of variants.

So anyway, that’s a, you know, it’s a great question. It’s a good one that you asked because so few words do we know the backstory, and this is one of them.

Well, thank you so much.

Lynn, thanks for calling. I’m glad to help you, Lynn.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So if you’re sitting around on the couch and thinking about language, give us a call. The number is 1-877-929-9673, or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.