• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Zippy Facts

Zippy Facts

Interesting Random Facts

Where does the expression “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” come from and What does it mean?

By Karen Hill

As far as is known, Anita Loos originated the expression “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” when selecting it as the title of her book.

But she may have taken the idea from an amusing book, The New King Arthur, which first appeared anonymously in 1885, but was written by an American poet, Edgar Fawcett.

The book is a burlesque of Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, and in it Sir Galahad, “the spotless knight,” is depicted as an insufferably vain prig.

Vivien, a brunette lady-in-waiting to Queen Guinevere, desperately in love with Galahad, has sought vainly for the magical “face-wash and hair-dye,” alleged to be a secret concoction of Merlin, the magician, for both she and Galahad think that his affection would be fixed upon her if she were a “Saxon blonde.”

Frustrated in obtaining the concoction, she says at last:

Sir Galahad, cant thou never love me, then,
If! remain brunette? I promise thee
That no brunette of more domestic turn
Has ever lived as wife than I would prove.

To which Galahad loftily replies:

Hadst thou been blonde . . . ah, well, I will not say
What joy has perished for all future time!
O Vivien, wildly, passionately loved!-

Vivien: My Galahad! Dost thou mean it?

Galahad: No, not now.
I would have meant it, wert thou only blonde.
Farewell, by blonde that art not nor canst be
This woful barrier lies between us twain
Forevermore. I shall be virgin knight
Henceforth, with one long sorrow in my soul,
And all my dreams and thoughts to one sad tune
Set ceaselessly, “She might have been a blonde!”

Related

  • Where does the expression "till the cows come home" come from and What does it mean?
  • Where does the expression "to come out flat footed" come from and What does it mean?
  • Where does the expression "to come out at the little end of the horn" come from and What does it mean?
  • Where does the expression "come off your perch" come from and What does it mean?
  • What does the expression "to get one's come uppance" mean and Where does it come from?
  • Where does the expression "to be ahead of the game" come from and What does to come out ahead mean?

Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
Accomplishments Animals Culture Finance Firsts Food Geography Health History Inventions Language Law Mythology Odds People Plants Religion Science Space The World Universe Your Body

About · Privacy · Contact
Copyright © 2019 Zippy Facts