141 "Elementary, my dear Watson!" (Phrase origins - alt.usage.english)
Description
This article is from the alt.usage.english FAQ, by Mark Israel misrael@scripps.edu with numerous contributions by others.
141 "Elementary, my dear Watson!" (Phrase origins - alt.usage.english)
does not occur as such in any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes stories, although Holmes does exclaim "Elementary" in "The
Crooked Man", and says "It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I
assure you" in "The Cardboard Box". The first recorded
juxtaposition is in the 1929 film "The Return of Sherlock Holmes"
(the first Holmes film with sound).
The original stories never mention an Inverness cape, a
deerstalker hat, or a meerschaum pipe, either. Those props are due
to illustrators and to actors.
The WWW Sherlockian home page is at:
<http://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~credmond/sh.html>
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