Talk:ridonkulous

RFV discussion
Slang for ridiculous. How common is this? Mglovesfun (talk) 18:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well I happen to use it all the time. But I've been known for being weird like that. We also say diriculous. Tooironic 08:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well it might be in "widespread use". What does Google think? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 930 Google Hits (in English, including repeats) and 9 Google Book hits. So it's not in "widespread use". Mglovesfun (talk) 14:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've heard its use here in New Zealand, albeit very colloquial. It also seems to me that the user of this word often tries to invoke humour as well as expressing the absurdity of the topic in question. Jamesjiao 02:40, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Google suggests did you mean redonkulous. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:01, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Cited. Appears to have entered circulation early in the Big Zeroes, but have become much more common in the last couple of years.  I'm not sure if I had heard it before this memorable bit from Jon Stewart. -- Visviva 10:02, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Webster's Quotations says "Redonkulous is a pop culture term originating from an episode of Comedy Central's Crank Yankers and first widely used in the Washington [area]". Note that WQ takes content from all kinds of dodgy Internet sources so this might really be from Wikipedia etc. Equinox ◑ 17:05, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

RFV passed. Thanks for the cites, Visviva! —Ruakh TALK 14:38, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Etymology
The creation of this adjective is widely accepted to have been created on Cape Cod MA during the early summer of 1986 by John Mahan, when referencing an action taken by Sean Donlan. He was looking for a way to express his feelings that Donlan's actions were "beyond ridiculous", which during those times the majority of his actions were just that. The adjective was accepted by their housemates(most of them high school and college friends) for the rest of the summer and at the conclusion of the summer the young men dispersed throughout the U.S. to begin their professional careers. Although the term remained popular among this group and throughout MA, it wasn't until the late 1990's when the Boston area become a Hollywood target that the phrase began to appear in the media.LabjackMA (talk) 15:33, 14 October 2016 (UTC)


 * If this is in no way recorded, how can it be considered definitive? 136.226.60.203 19:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

There is an isolated example, not in print but in recorded audio, much earlier, in a 1948 episode of The Abbott and Costello Show (a radio program) in which Bela Lugosi appears as a guest and uses the phrase "those ridonkulous cops" just before he leaves. Since the work was in an audio format, there is no indication as to spelling. In any case, unless someone can find other uses of the word in the years or decades following, it is not clear whether this single instance is in any way connected to other (and especially more recent) uses of the word, or whether it is simply a botched pronunciation that didn't get edited out due to lower production quality standards of the day. --Jonadab, 2020-Nov-04

It's absurd to attribute this word to a specific mid-2000s TV show like Crank Yankers or the O.C. We were using this word when I was in college in the late 1990s, and I'm sure it predates that as well.


 * I have removed the following unreferenced, disputed information from the entry:
 * First coined by fictional character Seth Cohen in "The. O.C", it was much later used and popularised by Jason Segel's character Sydney Fife in the movie 'I Love You, Man."

Earliest print reference can be found in a 1908 book on magic by Ellis Stanyon. Magic, Volumes 5-7 can be found in the Library Of Congress Harry Houdini collection.
 * - -sche (discuss) 00:05, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

BIG BANG THEORY
The first time I heard the word ridonkulous was on an episode of The Big Bang Theory (Series 02 Episode 04 – The Griffin Equivalency). I just heard it used on a commercial for one of the tattoo shows. Silver Haired Saint66.115.79.34 22:21, 13 July 2014 (UTC)