Origin
The origin of the punchline remains mysterious, but it was circulating in a Philadelphia primary school by the early 1950s and in the suburbs of New York City as early as 1956–57.
The phrase "no soap" possibly originated around 1860, the time it was first recorded, meaning "I haven't any money" or "I will not lend you money." Its contemporary connotation is "not a chance" or "nothing doing." However, the phrase itself was being employed in an absurdist and humorous context as early as the 1750s, when it appeared in a well-known piece of nonsense prose improvised by the English dramatist and actor Samuel Foote in order to test the memory of a rival: "So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber..."
Read more about this topic: No Soap Radio
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.”
—Neal Cassady (1926–1968)
“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“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)