It is interesting how words and phrases work their way into everyday language. For instance, the phrase “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!”
For some reason, during Fisherman’s Picnic I kept hearing the phrase. I volunteered in the bingo tent and when someone in my section won, I gave them a high five and they declared, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”
I didn’t think much about it. It is just something people say when they are excited right? But why?
The News-Herald office is the repository for the Fisherman’s Picnic prizes. After the Grand Marais Lions draw tickets for all the gift certificates and fun gifts, they bring them to our office to make it easy for winners to claim their prizes. So we have had a steady stream of visitors stopping by to see if they were winners or losers.
More than once during the week, someone has happily claimed his or her prize and declared, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”
And then, last night at my house I was visiting with relatives—my daughter-in-law Sara, my sister-in-law Lois, my niece Marcele and her grandnephew, Jonathan, all from Indiana—and there it was again. Sara was talking about completing something successfully and she called out, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!”
That was enough. I had to figure this out. I asked everyone if they knew the origin of the phrase. No one knew, but Jonathan had a theory. He said he thought it had something to do with Las Vegas and cheap chicken dinners.
He googled the phrase and “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” he was right. That is the most common explanation. According to a number of web sources, in the 1970s casinos tried to attract gamblers with inexpensive dinners. The price of a three-piece chicken dinner, with potato and a side of vegetables was under $2. Common bets were $2, so the people running the roulette or craps tables would try to lure in gamblers by trying to convince them they would win enough for a chicken dinner.
I did a little checking myself before starting this column and I found the same information. The only conflicting information I found was still similar. According to one site, the phrase was first used at The Aqueduct Racecourse in New York in 1954. According to wordorigins.org, the most common bet on a horse was two bucks and even a small payoff would give you the price of the restaurant’s chicken dinner, priced on the menu at about a dollar.
My real question though is not about “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.” Finding the origin of that phrase was easy. But when Sara called out the phrase, I found myself saying, “Where did that come from? Is that even a thing?”
I shocked myself. Where did that come from? When did the phrase “Is that even a thing?” become a replacement for “Is this real?” or “Are you joking?” or “Tell me more about this.”
I don’t recall when I first heard someone ask, “Is that even a thing?” But I know that I now hear it at least once a week. Everyone is saying it—at the coffee shop, the post office and on TV.
I tried to find the origin of the phrase, but it is difficult. If you search “Is that even a thing?” you come up with the definition of thing as a noun or the synonyms of thing or a trailer of the 1982 movie The Thing.
After much internet surfing, I found a fitting description of the phrase on Cambridge.org, a cluttered dictionary website that says the phrase is used when you are surprised that something exists.
That makes sense. That is how it is being used. That is what I meant to say when the odd phrase came out of my mouth. However, I have yet to find the origin of the phrase.
It doesn’t really matter, but what I found most interesting is that I am not the only person asking this question. There are blogs galore asking the same question. There are learned people studying this linguistic trend. I found an editorial piece in the New York Times by a doctoral candidate at the University of Notre Dame asking the same question.
Some people think it was first said on the ridiculous cartoon Family Guy. Others claim it was first uttered on Seinfeld. But it is unclear when we started stringing the words together in this haphazard manner. No one seems to know when “Is that even a thing?” became a thing.
If you can come up with a solid explanation, let me know. I’ll give you a high five and say “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!”
It’s okay to be absurd, ridiculous,
and downright irrational at times;
silliness is sweet syrup that helps us
swallow the bitter pills of life.
Richelle E. Goodrich
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