Early Use
The phrase in its pejorative sense has been used since at least the mid-1950s. In a letter to the editor of the LA Times in 1956, a correspondent bemoaned a decline in College Pro Football and mentioned "majoring in underwater basket weaving, or the preparation and serving of smorgasbord, or, particularly at Berkeley, the combined course of anatomy and panty-raiding". The following year, an article in the National Review mentioned that "the bored students in the educationists' courses call those dreary subjects 'underwater basket-weaving courses'", and another year on a newspaper column noted that "One seaside university is bowing to the stern educational demands of the times by eliminating its popular course in underwater basket weaving". An article in the Daily Collegian at Penn State University in 1961 refers to a parody in which "a 'typical' Miami coed majoring in underwater basketweaving was interviewed". An article from 1976 refers to football players so dumb that they had to take underwater basket weaving, and another 1976 article refers to underwater basket-weaving as "an old old family joke".
Read more about this topic: Underwater Basket Weaving
Famous quotes containing the word early:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)