Where did the term "on the bubble" originate?
97778
Quoting the source:\n"It seems that "on the bubble" almost certainly comes from the qualifying runs preceding the annual Indianapolis 500 auto race, in which cars compete for the limited number of starting places in the race.  Since there are several qualifying runs, the slowest, barely-qualifying car in any given run is said to be "on the bubble" because just one other car making better time in a subsequent run would burst that driver's bubble and dash his or her dream of competing in the big race.  The final day of qualifying runs is known, in fact, as "Bubble Day."\n\nJust exactly when "on the bubble" made its first appearance at the Indy 500 is uncertain, although one ADS-L correspondent remembers it being in use back in the 1950s, but over the last twenty years or so it has migrated into the vocabularies of football and basketball commentators, and now into the realm business-speak as well."
141560
Nobody actually knows where that phrase comes from.  There is an urban legend about where it came from that can be found here: http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm
900691
bubble puppy. i have a new copy of this for sale if you want it.
367174
Kentucky: http://www.motelmag.com/articles/bubbleland.html
868294
I think it was coined by Martin Lawrence, the same man who gave us "You go, Girl!"\n\nCave\n\np.s.---Just found this:\n\n"In the case of "don't go there," the earliest citation for the phrase in print in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from an interview with comedian Martin Lawrence in Entertainment Weekly back in February 1994. At the time the star of the highly-rated Fox sitcom "Martin," Lawrence took the opportunity to complain, oddly enough, that his material was being stolen by other Fox shows: \n\n"Something ain't right," Lawrence says, removing his sunglasses. ... "We started using the expressions 'You go, girl!' and 'Don't go there!' and no one in television was doing that. No one. Now a lot of Fox shows are using the same stuff and the same premises."
89653
My dad use to say that sometimes when I was going out on a date.  "Going to watch the submarine races?" It would be nice to know the origin of that.  All I could think of was making out.
22783
The bubbles are not "air" as most of the other answers claim; they are gaseous water, otherwise known as steam.  reverie's assertion about water pressure is also incorrect.  In a pot, the bubbles primarily form at the bottom of the pan because that's the hottest part of the pan and water.  The water there gets above the boiling point (212 F) and changes to steam.  At first, surface tension keeps the bubble stuck to the pan. But when enough steam is generated to make the bubble large enough, the bouancy of the bubble forces it to rise to the surface.
509529
1838, Amer.Eng., "some kind iof alcoholic drink," of unknown origin. \n\nOne of that class of words (e.g. dingus, doohickey, gadget, gizmo, thingumabob) which are conjured up to supply names for items whose proper names are unknown or not recollected. \n\nUsed at various periods for "money," "a professional tramp," "a muffin," "a typographical ornament," "male genitalia," "a Chinese," "an Italian," "a woman who is neither your sister nor your mother," and "a foolish person in authority." \n\nPopularized in sense of "foolish person" by TV show "All in the Family" (1971), though this usage dates from 1905.
1974
The greatest diameter for a bubblegum bubble is 58.4 cm (23 in). The bubble was blown by Susan Montgomery Williams of Fresno, California, USA at the ABC-TV studios in New York City, USA on July 19, 1994. Susan has been an expert bubble blower for over 20 years.
186395
The term "baby boom" was coined in 1941, but I can't find out by whom.\n\n"Baby boom coined 1941; derivative baby-boomer (member of the one that began 1945) first recorded 1974."\nhttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=baby+boomer&searchmode=none\n\nThe term "generation X" was coined in the 1960s by Charles Hamblett, and was popularized in 1991 by Douglas Coupland.\n\n"The term was coined as a result of a 1964 study of British youth by Jane Deverson. ... Deverson, in an attempt to save her research, worked with Hollywood correspondent Charles Hamblett to create a book about the study. Hamblett decided to name it Generation X."\n\n"Although the origins of the term "Generation X" go back at least as far as the early 1960s, it was popularized by Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel 'Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture', in which Coupland describes the angst of those born between roughly 1960 and 1965, who, while technically part of the Baby Boom Generation, feel no connection to its cultural icons." \nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X\n\nA newly created word is called a "neologism."\n\n"A neologism is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created ("coined") — often to apply to new concepts, or to reshape older terms in newer language form. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context."\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologisms\n\nOne explanation for the spread of new words and the related concepts is that these words and concepts are "memes."  The theory of memes is really interesting.\n\n"The term "meme"... refers to any unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea or concept, which one mind transmits (verbally or by repeated action) to another mind. Examples might include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods in addition to concepts such as race. Different definitions of meme generally agree, very roughly, that a meme consists of some sort of a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution having a resemblance to the gene (the unit of genetics)."\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
568829
Where the poem originates, I don't know. However, when ice-cream was first produced in mass, in Victorian England, it would be sold on little glass holders known as 'penny licks', which might explain the 'penny a lump'.
598728
"Pushing the envelope" is a good example of how jargon -- the specialized or technical vocabulary of a group or profession -- gradually enters general usage. "Pushing the envelope" comes from the jargon of test pilots, and has actually been around since the end of the Second World War. The "envelope" involved is a sort of visual metaphor for the technical limits of a high-performance aircraft. A graph of such an aircraft's performance would appear as a rising slope as the craft approaches its limits of speed and stress, then fall off rapidly (putting it mildly) when the plane exceeds its capacity and the pilot loses control. Safety, relatively speaking, lies within these limits, or "inside the envelope." A pilot who "pushes the envelope" and tries to exceed the known capabilities of the aircraft risks what engineers delicately term "catastrophic system failure," otherwise known as a crash. \n\nBecause "pushing the envelope" had such a esoteric origin, it took a best-selling book -- Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" in 1979 -- and later the popular movie "Top Gun" to introduce it to the general public. Since then it has begun to crop up in increasingly non-technical contexts, to the point where it is now a currently trendy metaphor for simply "pushing it," or testing the limits of what is permissible in a given situation.
120738
I believe it originated around gangsters of the 20s who wanted a word to act tough with when asking for money such as "Gimme yer dough!!" or "Frankie, don't forget the dough or Patty will be mad" It was just the slang of the time, but sort of lingered till present day
580875
Speech Balloons\n\nThe link below has a great history of them. Good question.
495585
Don't know. But they were in California where it started. Check their website!
361336
The phrase is derived from the practice of quickly jotting down calculations on the piece of paper nearest to hand, which in pre-email days often meant the back of an envelope. Another possible origin for the phrase is a widespread myth that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address on the back of an envelope while on the train to Gettysburg.\n\nThe physicist refered to by your professor is Feynman.
218503
gawulp.  Smell the bubbles after you pop them.