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I know the meaning of "couch potato" is a person living a mostly sedentary lifestyle who likes to watch TV while lying on the couch, but why potato?

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3 Answers

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Couch Potato was introduced by Robert D. Armstrong in the book The Official Couch Potato Handbook

From http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20080521102001/http://www.potatomuseum.com/exCouch.html

"Very few words have a birthday so precise, and so precisely known, as couch potato. It was on July 15, 1976, we are told, that couch potato came into being, uttered by Tom Iacino of Pasadena, California, during a telephone conversation. He was a member of a Southern California group humorously opposing the fads of exercise and healthy diet in favor of vegetating before the TV and eating junk food (1973). Because their lives centered on television--the boob tube (1966)--they called themselves boob tubers. Iacino apparently took the brilliant next step and substituted potato as a synonym for tuber. Thinking of where that potato sits to watch the tube, he came up with couch potato.

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I'm fairly certain the term as around before this 1982 book, but can't find anything online to back that up. Anyone have a good dictionary of slang etymology? – Neil Fein Jun 10 '11 at 6:17
@Neil Fein - I love Google Books, but they're not always as careful about adding metadata as one might wish. For instance, if you scroll to the top of that book's entry, you'll see that the actual date of publication was... 1999. – MT_Head Jun 10 '11 at 6:33
@MT - Ah, you're right. (And I spotted this in another book: There's an issue of a business magazine that uses the term; GB says it's from 1940, but the cover is distinctly modern.) – Neil Fein Jun 10 '11 at 6:40
@Neil Fein - I swear sometimes I don't know where they come up with the dates they list... there was a TV Guide citation in the same search results, and the GB date was 1958 (the show listing was the Tracey Ullman Show, however, so it was sometime in the late '80s). I thought at first that they might be using the magazine's founding date, but TV Guide started in 1953, not 1958... – MT_Head Jun 10 '11 at 7:44
@MT_Head and @Neil: this is a well-known problem with Google Books. See this Language Log post: Google Books: A Metadata Train Wreck or this post of Kosmonaut's on meta. – RegDwighт♦ Jun 10 '11 at 10:06
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up vote 3 down vote

Etymonline says the usage was first recorded in 1979.

Google NGrams apparently backs this up, and yet shows an anomalous blip around the turn of the 20th century:

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What to make of the 1900 bulge, I can't say.

"Potato" is used presumably because it's inert, shapeless and plump: like most people who spend their lives in front of the TV. It also has a similar sound to other expressions using a stressed modifier followed by "potato": hot potato, sweet potato, mashed potatoes, etc., so there was a sound to mimic to make it sound "right".

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I found that same blip earlier, if you look at the details for 1900 - 1904, it shows No results found for "couch potato" Results for couch potato (without quotes). Is that normal in NGrams? – JoseK Jun 10 '11 at 10:19
The OED also dates it from 1979, but the quotation (from the LA Times) "The Humboldt State Marching Lumberjacks‥and the Couch Potatoes who will be lying on couches watching television as they are towed toward the parade route." strongly suggests that this was a name, presumably a jokey reference to a phrase already in use. – Colin Fine Jun 10 '11 at 10:21
@JoseK: I normally tread lightly with NGrams because of anomalies like this, and I hesitate to use it as a comparison tool at all, since the meanings of the compared expressions are hard to nail down. – Robusto Jun 10 '11 at 10:27
The earlier blip appears to be a date mis-scan of an issue of The Savoy and a capture of Couch and Potato next to each other. – Callithumpian Jun 10 '11 at 11:11
There a lot of words with a 1900 data, it generally means the date was missing and the system defaults to 1900. 1904 was the base date on the old mac-os but that may be coincidence – mgb Jun 10 '11 at 12:52
up vote 2 down vote

It might have something to do with people being called a 'vegetable' when they are unconscious in a coma (in a vegetative state).
Vegetables are inanimate objects. A potato is a vegetable, chosen for the phrase perhaps because of it's plump shape that would be associated with some who doesn't do any exercise and would likely be overweight.

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