Origin
The use of the word 'lemon' to describe a highly flawed item predates its use in describing cars, and can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century as a British and American slang. Julian Koenig used the term to refer to a defective model in Volkswagen's 1950s Think Small advertising campaign.
Economist George Akerlof has also been credited with coining the term in his 1970 paper "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism." Akerlof identified the severe lemon problems that may afflict markets characterized by asymmetrical information. A study of rejections of important economic papers noted that before Akerlof's paper was accepted, The first lemon law was proposed in California in 1980.
Read more about this topic: Lemon (automobile)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)