Re: You bet your (sweet) bippy!
Jerry, John (a.k.a. trolley) had it about right. But this one you could have looked up on
OneLook where they said "an unspecified part of the anatomy (usually used in the phrase You bet your (sweet) bippy). [nonce word of uncert. orig.]." The
OED says the same thing about the origin, but then proceed to provide it (well, maybe it's not perfectly certain, but I'd bet a few bucks on it), which even I remember (as many other mature citizens undoubtedly do). As far as I can determine there was no record of this word being used previously and all indications are that Rowan & Martin just made it up (but the remote possibility exists that they might have heard it somewhere).
CASSELL’S DICTIONARY OF SLANGBIPPY noun [1960s and still in use] (
originally U.S.): A synonym for ass, especially in the phrase
you can bet your sweet bippy. [coined on NBC-TV’s
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, circa 1967]
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OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARYBIPPY noun: Popularized by use as a nonsense word with an air of general innuendo, but intentionally vague meaning, on the U.S. television programme Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968-72): see quote. 1968]
YOU BET YOUR (SWEET) BIPPY and variants: be assured, certainly; Hence: the buttocks, the backside.
Quote:
<1968 “[On Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in] we say things like, ‘YOU BET YOUR BIPPY!’ or ‘You bet your nurdle!’ I'm sure some people attach a dirty connotation to those words. We don't even know what they mean; they're just funny.”—New York Times Magazine, 6 October, page 146/1>
<1979 “Dance your BIPPY off.”—The Globe & Mail (Toronto), 29 March, page 16/5>
<1983 “The only thing they found immoral in the Vietnam War was the possibility that they might get their BIPPIES shot off.”—Sunday Intelligencer (Bucks County, Pennsylvannia), 4 September, page A9/4>
<1990 “YOU BET YOUR BIPPY we're taking a position.”—CNN by H. Whittemore, vi. page 300>
<1999 “If the victims had been children of the established residents, . . . YOU BET YOU’RE [sic] SWEET BIPPIE you would have heard some outcry.”—Los Angeles Times (Electronic edition), 4 December, page 1>
<2005 “YOU CAN BET YOUR SWEET BIPPY that if you stifled your cynical snorting and followed their suggestions, you'd end up feeling far better.”—The Guardian (Manchester, England), Nexis, 12 November, page 52>
<2008 “For two years the show [[Rowan and Martin’s TV show Laugh-in]] topped the Nielsen ratings, and its catch-phrases-- Sock it to me, YOU BET YOUR SWEET BIPPY and Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's --were recited across the country.”—Variety, 2 June>
(quotes from
Oxford English Dictionary and archived sources)
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Ken – July 11, 2008
