u/JorWat

Ah, misunderstood your comment, I apologize.

It's an interesting data point, but I can't find any evidence of it being used elsewhere, and looking at the rest of the episode, the 'Charlie' is not an arbitrary name, it's a reference to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol. It's just using the typical meaning of 'downer' and adding 'Charlie', like with "You are a regular Charlie-I-hate-Christmas this year" earlier in the episode.

Still, well found!

I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough about these things to provide an explanation that will please you, I fear. But I'll give it one more try.

We know that those two meanings of 'bank' have different origins because we can see the words they descended from and the similar words in other languages. For example, it's pretty obvious that a financial 'bank' descends from the same place as similar words from Italian and French ('banca' and 'banque'), and the earliest usage in English listed in the OED of that use of 'bank' is from the 15th century. Meanwhile, the sloping 'bank' dates all the way back to at least the 12th century, and doesn't have the same equivalents in those other languages. We also see differences in how the two meanings get spelled. The financial meaning occasionally has been spelled 'banque', and the sloping meaning occasionally has been spelled 'bonk', but never the other way around. We also don't see a gradual spectrum of other meaning that imply that the financial word came from the sloping word.

Though in this case, they actually are (probably) connected, as you'll notice that the financial etymology says it comes from "Proto-Germanic *bankiz- "shelf,"", while the sloping etymology says it comes from "Proto-Germanic *bankon "slope," cognate with *bankiz "shelf"".

Anyway, we don't have something like this for 'check'. We can explain the gradual change of it over time (as I said elsewhere, the basic idea is king is under attack -> movement or options are restricted -> something is stopped or restrained -> something is controlled -> something is examined to prevent error), we can find old documents that match this change, and we don't see any evidence of multiple originally different words converging on the same current word. 'Check', in all its different meanings, has pretty consistently been spelled with an 'e', for example, while if it did have connection to other words like 'chick' or 'chock', we'd expect some variance in the vowel along the way.

Just to be clear, I accept the opinion of the OED and Rachel Dratch that the SNL character is the origin of the phrase. Anyone who says otherwise is most likely misremembering, possibly inspired by 'negative Nancy' and other similar phrases.

Not according to some of the other people in these comments and elsewhere...

I think the evolution is something like this:

king is under attack -> movement or options are restricted -> something is stopped or restrained -> something is controlled -> something is examined to prevent error

It's complicated to track due to the verb and noun forms both influencing each other.

Also, you need to bear in mind that the chess meaning has been in English for several hundred years. The earliest quote the OED has found is from 'The romance of Guy of Warwick', said to be from about 1300:

Ate ches þai sett hem to playn,
Þo hendy kniȝtes boþe tvayn,
Þat egre were of siȝt:
Er þai hadde don half a game,
Wiþ strong wretþe þai gan to grame,
Þo gomes michel of miȝt.
Þurch a chek Fabour seyd, for soþ,
Sadok in hert wex wroþ,
& missayd him anon riȝt,
& clep[e]d him 'fiz a putayn,'
& smot him wiþ miȝt and main,
Wher-þurch ros michel fiȝt.

So there has been a lot of time for semantic change.

Basically, it's that we never see anyone talk about anything like a 'chick mark' or a 'hat choke'.

The best source is probably the OED, where it lists all the definitions, some now obsolete, that lead us from the single chess meaning to more metaphorical meanings of situations that required attention, to all the meanings it has now.

There is one other term in the OED for which SNL is listed as the origin (though it's not as explicit as in this case), 'strategery'.

That said, there's another use of 'strategery' that dates back to 1848 meaning "The use of devious or dishonest schemes, tricks, or ploys, in order to achieve a particular end.": "As regards the free kirk worshippers, the present is a very hard case; for no kind of strategery will meet it, as the Duke is omnipotent."

I will admit that 'bucket list' is an obvious term to come up with, so I would not be surprised if someone independently came up with it before the film. But, even if that is true, the term definitely didn't reach widespread usage before the film.

The OED would also love you if you could prove them wrong. In the past, they have actively challenged the public to find older usage of words and phrases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balderdash_and_Piffle

When I said elsewhere I couldn't find any usage prior to 2004, this was the one exception: people with the real name Debbie Downer.

I'm not completely sure of all the details, but I believe it's because we can trace the gradual evolution of the meanings of 'check', and we never see any influence from other similar words like 'chick', 'choke', or 'chock'.

Yes. 'Negative Nancy' (and other similar forms such as 'Negative Ned' and 'Negative Nellie') are older, with the OED having a 1934 quote for Negative Ned ("‘Another beauty of not going visiting,’ observed Negative Ned, ‘is that you don't have to use those tom-thumb guest towels.’"), and a 1999 quote for 'Negative Nancy' ("Be prepared for one or two ‘negative-Nancies’ to try to pick apart your post."), though those are all in the same entry, so I don't think they're saying Negative Nancy dates no earlier than that.

I apologize for not also tracking down that interview. I will try to do better next time.

Are you talking about the unrelated computing usage of 'bucket list' to refer to "A list of buckets involved in the operation or design of a program. Also: a list of the items in a given bucket."? Because that does date back to 1960 ("Using a bucket list structure of the type proposed by C. J. Shaw in FN-1634, the program sorts each incoming word serially, constructing a list within each of 256 buckets for Good Words of a given alphabetic range." J. C. Olney, Feat, An Inventory Program for Information Retrieval 3)

However, that is a completely different phrase to the more recent version meaning "A list of things a person hopes to experience or achieve during his or her lifetime." The earliest the OED can find for that is from a 2006 news article talking about the then upcoming film: "Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are set to star in ‘The Bucket List’, about two cancer patients... The two terminally ill men make a wish list of things they want to do before they kick the bucket—called the bucket list—then take a road trip." - UPI Newswire (Nexis) 29 June

EDIT: Also, I can't access the article as it's behind a paywall, but according to Wikipedia, this Wall Street Journal article states that the writer of the film, Justin Zackham "coined the term "bucket list" with his screenplay for the film, inspired by his own "List of Things to do Before I Kick the Bucket", which he shortened to "Justin's Bucket List"."

See what I mean...

I've looked, and I can find no evidence of this being used prior to 2004, and the OED is rarely this definite on an origin. For comparison, the earliest known usage of 'friend zone' is in the sitcom Friends, with the OED saying "Popularized by the television sitcom Friends"; the earliest known usage of 'bucket list' is from the film The Bucket List, with the OED saying "Either coined or popularized by the film The Bucket List"; and the earliest known usage of 'mullet' to refer to a hairstyle is from the Beastie Boys song 'Mullet Head', with the OED saying "Apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by U.S. hip-hop group the Beastie Boys".

I wouldn't have included the first part of that title had I not seen the reaction people can have when you point this out. https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveFromNewYork/comments/1u90yla/snl_in_the_oxford_english_dictionary/

Ah, I had no idea this had so recently been discussed.

I'd heard before that 'checkmate' comes from the Persian šāh-māt, meaning 'the king has been conquered' or 'the king has died', but never put it together than all the other meanings of 'check' also come from that.

{YTP} ~ Speedfolded