Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Take it to the next level seems to have become the ultimate catch phrase.  For a while, I was hearing mostly from reality TV shows of competitions, but these days, one is likely to read ads using that phrase for everything from french fries to waste management - everything except for hand tools "We've taken spirit levels to the next level".

It's hard to get answers from Google's ngram viewer, because "take it to the next level" is sic words, and they want phrases of 5 words or less.  It seems "it to the next level" had a spurt of popularit between 1840 and 1860, disappeared until the mid-1950s, and started getting popular in the early 1980s, growing at a steep rate after that. And I don't think we can blame (and yes, I think blame is the right word) Tim Gunn for it - in 1984, there was little more than ESPN on cable; Project Runways didn't start for another two decades.

There must have been some reason that people started hearing and using the phrase, about 1984, that "sampled" the phrase among writers, who glommed onto the phrase.  Given the publishing cycle, it might be 1982 or so; it takes a year or two to write and publish a book.

Sportscasters are notorious for colorful language,, even illiterate language, because they are constantly looking for a new way to say the same few things that they report on, over and over, for decades.  Was there a sportscaster, en fuego, to steal Dan Patrick's bad Spanish using the phrase on ESPN in their early days?

Or maybe it was an advertisement.  In any case, does anyone else have an idea why this phrase suddenly became very popular when it did?