Crowdsourcing a Very Important Question
We were just debating the origin of the phrase “rude, crude, and socially unacceptable” . . . and I can’t immediately locate the answer. At least, I can’t locate it using Google searches on my iPhone in between domino games.
I have this vague memory of Steve Martin using the phrase as one of the “wild and crazy guys” on SNL. But I can’t find a link to substantiate that either.
So I throw it open to you. First documented and convincing-sounding answer earns its finder a cookie.*
*Offer not valid in countries with Internet access.
I had always heard it “rude, crude, and socially unacceptable”. In any case, it might predate Steve Martin….
Origin
[note: fished from spam filter. --Stashiu]
Comment by Chuck Bartowski — 12/21/2011 @ 6:43 pm
Stumped you, huh?
Comment by Patterico — 12/21/2011 @ 6:59 pm
Ah, who cares?
In this great and special Holiday Season, I choose to focus my mind on what’s really important.
Comment by qdpsteve — 12/21/2011 @ 7:00 pm
It was a phrase in the Catch 22 novel and bastardized by Steve Martin and the movue
[note: fished from spam filter. --Stashiu]
Comment by EricPWJohnson — 12/21/2011 @ 7:08 pm
It was in the Catch 22 novel and modified by several people
Comment by EricPWJohnson — 12/21/2011 @ 7:09 pm
I remember it from the ’70s, but I can’t give you a cite. I just remember my brother saying it. I also read Catch-22 in the early ’70s, but that was a long time ago and I couldn’t tell you if that’s a good cite or not.
Comment by Ag80 — 12/21/2011 @ 7:17 pm
Animal House?
Comment by madawaskan — 12/21/2011 @ 7:26 pm
My 9th grade German teacher, Mr. Kelly, in 1977.
Comment by kaf — 12/21/2011 @ 7:28 pm
Lily Tomlin, Big Business
“rude, crude, and thoroughly unattractive.”
I think.
Comment by foobius — 12/21/2011 @ 7:30 pm
I have no idea what y’all are even talking about.
Guess I’ll just be getting back to the rock I live under.
Comment by Dustin — 12/21/2011 @ 7:33 pm
My first thought was laugh-in, but a buddy insists it was Heller and was then copied by Mash and so on
Comment by EricPWJohnson — 12/21/2011 @ 7:53 pm
Someone asked the question before you, or is this where you got your question from:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/762.html
This turns out to be just the title of a blog post:
http://mlcref.blogspot.com/2009/06/rude-crude-and-socially-unacceptable.html
Was this phrase possibly used in some dictionary?
Try looking for “rude, crude and” followed by oher words.
The January 7, 1893 issue of the Nation has
(page 16):
“The author, in an evident desire to avoid the prolixity of explanation, too often slaps the reader’s faces with his climaxes, with the effect of being both rude and crude.”
This is too early.
Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 12/21/2011 @ 7:55 pm
Guess I’ll just be getting back to the rock I live under.
Comment by Dustin — 12/21/2011 @ 7:33 pm
– Does that rock have a certain socially unacceptable word spray painted on it?
Comment by Icy — 12/21/2011 @ 8:11 pm
heh
Comment by Dustin — 12/21/2011 @ 8:19 pm
This phrase was popular when I was in high school in the late 60s, so it didn’t originate with SNL although the show may have popularized it. I always considered it a phrase used mainly in the South, although I don’t know why.
Comment by DRJ — 12/21/2011 @ 8:20 pm
The original phrase was “rude, crude and totally lewd”… at least in my neck-a-the-woods.
Comment by Colonel Haiku — 12/21/2011 @ 8:38 pm
Sorry, I’ve lived <mumble> years on this earth and never once heard of that phrase until just now.
Comment by Milhouse — 12/21/2011 @ 9:46 pm
Hmmm, word of mouth in Callie in the ’70′s? Since I too read Catch-22, maybe it was from that? SNL? Yep, watched that. I just know I heard it, and used it at every opportunity!!!
Comment by Amy Shulkusky — 12/22/2011 @ 1:21 am
Barry Goldwater!
Comment by sickofrinos — 12/22/2011 @ 2:56 am
probably the same guy who came up with
“Gas, Grass, or Ass, nobody rides for free”
Comment by Frank Drackman — 12/22/2011 @ 3:11 am
I agree it was before SNL.
A wild guess would be George Carlin. Laugh-In sounds like a good possibility too.
Johnny Carson?
Comment by MD in Philly — 12/22/2011 @ 4:12 am
Isn’t it a twist on “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know”? Anyway when was RC and SU a catch phrase? I’m old and its wasn’t popular in these here parts.
Comment by sarahW — 12/22/2011 @ 7:17 am
Anyway “Rude, crude [blah blah blah] is used in sequence certainly as early as the early 19 oughts. Probably earlier.
Comment by sarahW — 12/22/2011 @ 7:25 am
The phrase I was familiar with in high school was rude, crude, and socially screwed. This predates 1975.
Comment by mysterian1729 — 12/22/2011 @ 7:38 am
My vague recollection is that it was Ruth Buzzi from
Laugh-In that first used the phrase.
Comment by Mariner44 — 12/22/2011 @ 8:26 am
Someone (?) famously referred to Lord Byron as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Your phrase seems to be an adaptation (corruption?) of that.
Comment by Mahon — 12/22/2011 @ 9:28 am
I think Mariner 44 is right
Comment by EricPWJohnson — 12/22/2011 @ 9:31 am
Correct quote, wrong movie:
All of Me
1984 – Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin
[note: fished from spam filter. --Stashiu]
Comment by Jay S. — 12/22/2011 @ 10:10 am
For me it was “rude, crude, and socially maladjusted”. It easily pre-dates 1970 as I remember my brother using it in the olden days.
Comment by Larry C — 12/22/2011 @ 10:54 am
Andrew Breitbart planted this phrase via a sophisticated network of hackers and blue heeler puppies.
“time” is an abstraction to Andrew Breitbart. While we experience time as a linear progression, Andrew Breitbart can plant evidence in any way shape or form, at any point in time.
Now it’s time to finish my Christmas shopping, as Breitbart hacked my tree to where there aren’t enough presents and hacked my mind to where I don’t even recall what was surely stolen from me.
Comment by Dustin — 12/22/2011 @ 11:10 am
It is old old old although I don’t know when that particular forumulation RC AND SU appeared. It’s easy to summon up examples of “Rude, crude…” from the early 20th century and I’m sure it goes back farther.
And I still say it’s a twist of The lady Caroline Lamb remark on Byron.
Comment by sarahW — 12/22/2011 @ 11:18 am
Actually now I’m thinking it was one of Lily Tomlin’s characters, also from Laugh-In. She not have originated it, but she sure popularized it!
Comment by Mariner44 — 12/22/2011 @ 11:23 am
She (Tomlin) has a similar line in “All of Me” (You are rude, crude, and thoroughly unattractive) but I don’t think I ever hear Edith Ann or Consumer advocate lady etc. say it.
Comment by sarahW — 12/22/2011 @ 11:30 am
NOT “stewed, screwed and tattooed”?
Comment by mojo — 12/22/2011 @ 11:57 am
Comment by EricPWJohnson — 12/21/2011 @ 7:08 pm
It was a phrase in the Catch 22 novel and bastardized by Steve Martin and the movue
[note: fished from spam filter. --Stashiu]
Amazon.com – 5 results for crude:
Page 206 … There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying…
Page 272 …glances of the men sitting around him on the rows of crude wood…
Page 295 …the rain god and the rice god in backward regions where such crude gods were still worshipped…
Page 308 …was amassed through unscrupulous speculations in crude petroleum…
Page 409 …at superior officers, even at Major Danby, and was crude an…
crude and surly and profane even in front of the chaplain…
No, it’s not in Catch-22. Maybe another novel by Joseph Heller? No, you wouldn’t confuse it with any sequel.
Let’s see: 0 results for socially
0 results for unacceptable
Page 56 …him?’ ‘I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That’s part of the rude. .
Page 191 … Yossarian got a tremendous kick out of the rude gusto with which Luci…
Page 249 …as spacious and square as the chaplain’s. He was openly rude an…
Page 400 …hallowed Hamlet been ignored and trampled upon with such rude indi…
Page 508 … ‘Hello, Luigi,’ he said, nodding so briskly that he almost seemed rude. ‘L…
openly rude and contemptuous toward the chaplain once he discovered that the chaplain would let him get way with it. No.
Maybe Catcher in the Rye?
3 results for crude
Page 23 … It was a very crude thing to do, in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing…
Page 126 …as seldom as I can.” Then she started getting funny Crude and all
Page 173 …was depressing the hell out of me. Usually I never say crude things like that to girls…
No.
0 results for socially
0 results for unacceptable
1 result for rude
Page 247 … What a rude bastard, but I couldn’t help it! Mr. Antolini just laug…
[note: fished from spam filter. --Stashiu]
Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 12/22/2011 @ 12:17 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/feynman-joking.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=rude%20crude&st=cse
PRANKS OF A NOBEL LAUREATE
Date: January 27, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 13, Column 1; Book Review Desk
Byline: By K.C. Cole
Lead:
”SURELY YOU’RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!”
Adventures of a Curious Character. By Richard P. Feynman with Ralph Leighton. Edited by Edward Hutchings. 350 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. $16.95.
…Mr. Feynman presents himself as rude, crude and socially unacceptable.
Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 12/22/2011 @ 12:22 pm
saraW, now I remember that line from “All of Me”, that might be why I was second-guessing myself. In any event, I’m pretty sure it was popularized (at least for me) in the late ’60s from hearing it on “Laugh-In”. We used to say it all the time in 1968 when I was in 8th grade and I don’t know where else it would have come from. I don’t have time to go through all the youtube clips here at work, but I’m sure someone will!
Comment by Mariner44 — 12/22/2011 @ 12:30 pm
“Rude, crude, and obnoxious.” Spoken by the Rat in reference to Damone in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
Comment by AMartel — 12/22/2011 @ 2:10 pm
I thought it was what Barack said to his wife when she goes on her eating spree?
Comment by Dohbiden — 12/22/2011 @ 2:14 pm
I have been using “Rude, crude, and socially unacceptable, and just can’t take you anywhere.” since the 60′s when I was growing up in Texas. So it definitely predates SNL etc.
Comment by peedoffamerican — 12/22/2011 @ 3:44 pm
I found a use in a sports context:
February 1979 New York Times:
New Yorkers Adjusting to Aggieland, and Vice Versa; Things Different in Texas
By MALCOLM MORAN Special to the New York Times
February 18, 1979, Section Sports, Page S9,
COLLEGE STATION, Tex.–When their dreams began in front of television sets more than 10 years ago, Tyrone Ladson and David Britton never thought that they would wind up here….They are also the target for Aggie jokes, any recycled stories that picture a stooge who is rude, crude, lewd or generally socially unacceptable. …
Earlier baseball players as “socially unacceptable”: (1960)
Some Inside Pitches on Baseball; A big-league player offers some personal views on the changes that have accompanied, and help to account for. the rampant popularity of the All-American Game. Some Inside Pitches on Baseball
By JIM BROSNAN
October 02, 1960 The New York Times Magazine, Page SM39
“Before World War II, in the time of the colorful characters of baseball — The Gashouse Gang, Al Schacht, Babe Ruth – the professional baseball player was socially unacceptable.”
But this means not accepted in high society.
Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 12/22/2011 @ 3:58 pm
All I know is I’ve been called the above and much worse back in the day.
Sticks and stones, baby.
Comment by daleyrocks — 12/22/2011 @ 5:34 pm
Hinting at old old oldness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H71P_RNz_c
Big number starts at 1:15
Comment by SarahW — 12/22/2011 @ 6:15 pm
hah that was fun
Comment by happyfeet — 12/22/2011 @ 6:19 pm
Surprising how hard it is to answer this question.
Comment by Patterico — 12/22/2011 @ 9:23 pm
23 skidoo.
Comment by Ag80 — 12/22/2011 @ 10:26 pm
By the likes of that movie clip, it seems to have been around awhile.
I think maybe Kilroy was the first to say it.
Comment by MD in Philly — 12/23/2011 @ 4:29 am
Domo Arigato.
Comment by Dohbiden — 12/23/2011 @ 4:55 am
Comment by SarahW — 12/22/2011 @ 6:15 pm
Hinting at old old oldness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H71P_RNz_c
Big number starts at 1:15
But that’s “Rude, crude and unattractive”
Song in a 1943 movie. Or is that also the title of the movie?
So “Rude, crude and something” seems to have been around first, for maybe a long time.
Thinkinbg about this, the word “rude” did not orginally mean discourteous, but rudimentary (unpolished) as in “rude beginnings” The meaning changed because “Rude” people, like those in the Capital One ads, can be sometimes inconsiderate.
Original meanings are sometimes preserved in common prhases.
Crude – which means somethinbg like raw or unprocessed was added maybe because the meaning of rude was unclear.
Or maybe rude applies to the writer, crude to the writing or result.
Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 12/23/2011 @ 12:57 pm
..my mother, who would be 96, always used the
phrase “rude, crude, and unattractive”
Comment by jgmurphey — 12/26/2011 @ 6:29 pm
um, speaking of mops… clean up on aisles 51 and 52… it looks like the spammers got a little more clever.
Of course arguably I am spamming when i suggest that regulars here might want to go to my site and catch up on my fight against a convicted terrorism. But that is different because… um… um… crap.
Comment by Aaron Worthing — 1/7/2012 @ 3:28 am