And How!!!

March 23, 2005 3:01 PM

What is the Etymological origin of the phrase "And How!" used as an exclamation.

It's a simple question that's probably easy if you have access to a good dead tree dictionary, but when you use a search engine you get every definition that includes the two words "and how"

posted by Megafly to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

Best answer: And how! emphatic, first recorded 1865, said to be a Ger.-Amer. colloquialism.
posted by hilker at 3:04 PM on March 23, 2005

And how!, "It probably originated as a direct translation of the German Und wie!"
posted by pealco at 3:37 PM on March 23, 2005

I have noticed a recent surge in "And how!" usage thanks to Don Hertzfeld's "Rejected", in which a character says "I am a consumer whore!" and another follows with "And how!"

For those who haven't seen it, it's great.
posted by pikachulolita at 4:13 PM on March 23, 2005

Very popular in the 20s, 30s, and 40s.
posted by Miko at 6:38 PM on March 23, 2005

Not that I'm a clone *anymore* but the phrase got a lot of play in The Jungle from which many tidbits of the argot slipped into mainstream usage. Back in the day one ran one's "gloss" but apparently one now consults one's "Smacktionary." [scroll down].
posted by Fezboy! at 8:09 AM on March 24, 2005

I can't remember the episode, but The Simpson's introduced the phrase to my circle of friends. Of course, the Simpsons writers were probably referencing something like what pika or fezboy are talking about... but we wouldn't know about it.
posted by gus at 9:24 AM on March 24, 2005

and how!:

Indicating "intensive emphasis of what someone else just said," and how! is a long-popular catchphrase first recorded in 1924. The Americanism possibly derives from the German und wie! or the Italian e come!, meaning the same thing, and once very common among Americans of German and Italian extraction, respectively.

--- Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins.
posted by icontemplate at 5:42 PM on March 24, 2005