The Simpsons
Idioms

A number of neologisms that originated on The Simpsons have entered popular vernacular. Mark Liberman, director of the Linguistic Data Consortium, remarked, " The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry other textual allusions." The most famous catchphrase is Homer's annoyed grunt: " D'oh! " So ubiquitous is the expression that it is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but without the apostrophe. Dan Castellaneta says he borrowed the phrase from James Finlayson, an actor in many Laurel and Hardy comedies, who pronounced it in a more elongated and whining tone. The staff of The Simpsons told Castellaneta to shorten the noise, and it went on to become the well-known exclamation in the television series.

Groundskeeper Willie 's description of the French as " cheese-eating surrender monkeys " was used by National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg in 2003, after France's opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq. The phrase quickly spread to other journalists. " Cromulent " and "embiggen", words used in " Lisa the Iconoclast ", have since appeared in the Dictionary.com 's 21st Century Lexicon, and scientific journals respectively. "Kwyjibo", a fake Scrabble word invented by Bart in " Bart the Genius ", was used as one of the aliases of the creator of the Melissa worm. "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords", was used by Kent Brockman in " Deep Space Homer " and has become a snowclone, with variants of the utterance used to express obsequious submission. It has been used in media, such as New Scientist magazine. The dismissive term " Meh ", believed to have been popularized by the show, entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2008. Other words credited as stemming from the show include "yoink" and "craptacular".

The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations includes several quotations from the show. As well as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", Homer's lines, "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try", from " Burns' Heir " (season five, 1994) as well as "Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the Internet and all", from " Eight Misbehavin' " (season 11, 1999), entered the dictionary in August 2007.

Many quotes/scenes have become popular Internet memes, including Jasper Beardley's quote "That's a paddlin ' " from " The PTA Disbands " (season 6, 1995) and "Steamed Hams" from " 22 Short Films About Springfield " (season 7, 1996).
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