More than half a century has flashed by since I began using the phrase no-brainer with that meaning, to the delight of colleagues and family members. The original context is long forgotton but not the phraseology: "That idea [typically of my own] turned out to be a no-brainer," I was heard to say. Much as today's exclamation, "What was I THINKing!" Along its etymological journey, no-brainer seems to have shifted its meaning. It is easy to understand why. Some ideas result from no thought, others require no thought. Modern dictionaries define no-brainer only in terms of simplicity. One example published on the web reads, “Making pumpkin pie can be a no-brainer if you use frozen pastry and canned filling.” Thus, in its original sense, "Making pumpkin pie can be a no-brainer if you're dieting."The phrase slam dunk has been appropriated from basketball from time to time as an alternative to no-brainer in the easy sense, although for most people a slam dunk is far from easy. To act in place of stupid idea, politicians and others have garnered non-starter from track-and-field or, in the extreme, dead-on-arrival from emergency-room parlance. Now, I do occasionally use no-brainer
-- but with its original meaning, secretly mindful
that often a simple solution is really a stupid idea. |
The expression no-brainer
was initially intended to replace stupid
idea. I was there.