EventHorizon1984 Log: eBay Discussion Topic - "When did "gooder" become a word?"

02 February 2011

eBay Discussion Topic - "When did "gooder" become a word?"

eBay Discussion Topic - "When did "gooder" become a word?"
2 February 2011
EventHorizon1984

Trawling through eBay, one can find serious topics of discussion on eBay's Liveworld controlled forums.

But for the purposes of this article, sometimes not.

A major eBay shirt seller, honeville1, asked "When did "gooder" become a word?".

This brought out a few collective chuckles, and remembering the quote by Edmund Burke (1729-1797) "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." (1)

Winston Churchill (1874-1965), "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." (2)
George Santayana (1863-1952), "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Or as we included in a previous article on forgetting the past:

Pablo Picasso, "If there is something to steal, I steal it."

But to partially answer Honeville's question.

The year was 1984, and a scene from a television mini-series left a memorable impression on millions of viewers. The conversation from V: The Final Battle (1984) basically started with:

"How you doin' gooder?" Ham Tyler (Michael Ironside)
"That's short for do-gooder. It's a little nickname he's got for me." Mike Donavon (Marc Singer)

The word "gooder" has been around the science fiction community for almost 27 years.

Speaking of 1984, it was a fairly good year for science fiction, fantasy, and horror feature films.

(Not an all inclusive list.)