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My husband used the phrase “since Christ was a corporal†at a work meeting. A co-worker told him he found it an offensive term because it linked Christianity with Hitler (apparently Hitler was once a corporal). Our understanding was that the terminology simply meant a very long time. Do you know the origins of the phrase and does it have anything to do with Hitler?
I always just assumed it meant since Christ was living, i.e. having a body... Corporal meaning of or relating to the body OR corporeal meaning of physical rather than spiritual substance.
One could make a grammatical argument that these corporals are both adjectives, but I think there is meant to be a humorous play on the words...
I'm curious as to how long the phrase has been in use--a brief google search dredged up a lot of similar phrases with the same intent and different character from Moses to Pluto.
I doubt any reference to Hitler; sounds like military slang. The earliest reference I turned up in Google Books was in the play The Garbage Man, by John Dos Passos (published 1926).
Hi, Mavis --
As ShugarShocked pointed out, this seems to be one of many variations on a formula. I've not researched this thoroughly, but the version I've heard more often is "since Christ left Chicago." One slang dictionary I have dates the "corporal"phrase back to the 1940s, but it could be even older, and my hunch would be that it doesn't have to do with Hitler. (Another silly version I've seen is "since Pontius was a Pilate."
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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