Hold the phone

Posted by ESC on February 02, 2004

In Reply to: Hold the phone posted by R. Berg on February 01, 2004

: : I cannot find anywhere where this quote originated from! Does anyone know>?

: It's probably not a quotation in the sense that the earliest person to say it can be identified.

"Hold your horses," directed at people, originated around the 1840s. (Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson, Facts on File, New York, 1997). "Hold your potatoes," better known as, "hold your tater," around the 1880s. (Listening to America: An Illustrated History of Words and Phrases from Our Lively and Splendid Past by Stuart Berg Flexner, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982).

I couldn't find any date for "hold the phone." But I'm guessing it grew out of the earlier "hold" phrases.