Comments on: Etymology: What is This * You Speak Of?

By: Michel

Michel — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:12:01 +0000

My earliest encounter with this phrase is from Seinfeld: “who are these Stooges you speak of”

It’s interesting that even I, who do not have English as my mother tongue, also find the phrase so very funny.

By: soundguy

soundguy — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:25:27 +0000

1943 movie Guadalcanal Diary, as the Army was relieving the Marines a guy coming on shore asked about the local women (or maybe dames), and the guy leaving said something like “What are these ‘women’ you speak of?”

By: Benjamin Rosenbaum

Benjamin Rosenbaum — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 16:23:57 +0000

“What is this love of which you speak?” — Matthew Lewis, The Monk, 1798. http://tinyurl.com/love-of-which

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:19:19 +0000

“All your base are belong to us” was taken from the game was Zero Wing, released for the Sega Mega Drive (known in the US as Genesis, although the game wasn’t released in American markets) in 1991.

By: Tophe

Tophe — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:12:05 +0000

From Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Pontius Pilate: Who is this “Wodewick” you speak of?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:05:31 +0000

Just to clarify – “All your base are belong to us” started from a bad Japanese to English translation of computer game somewhere in the late 80s I believe.

By: Wulf

Wulf — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 04:27:23 +0000

My first thought on the origin of the phrase was definitely the old sci-fi movies of which you… ahem…. that you mentioned. But lines like that were also used in a lot of old westerns. For example,
http://imdb.com/title/tt0047977/quotes