A parlor-game pun from the Algonquin Round Table circle (“meretricious” = “Merry Christmas”). The earliest printing Quote Investigator found is a December 1929 Walter Winchell column that credits no one. Adams is first named as its author in a 1945 biography of Alexander Woollcott, and no work by Adams himself containing the line has been found.
“Meretricious and a Happy New Year” popularly attributed to Franklin P. Adams; the earliest known printing (Walter Winchell, December 1929) names no author.
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In context
Evoking the world of Franklin P. Adams — American columnist (“The Conning Tower”) & Algonquin Round Table wit. Theme: "Meretricious and a Happy New Year". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Meretricious and a Happy New Year". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the pun actually turns up
Excerpt from
Walter Winchell, “On Broadway” (syndicated column), December 1930
Earliest print
Winchell’s “On Broadway,” The Post-Star (Glens Falls, NY), 30 December 1929, p. 4. No author named
First credit to F.P.A.
Samuel Hopkins Adams, A. Woollcott: His Life and His World (1945), pp. 121–122
Originator
Not identified (Quote Investigator)
Making up sentences with certain words still remains one of the most amusing parlor pastimes. … And F.P.A. clowned with Theopholis, viz: “That was Theopholis book I ever read!” … It was decided, too, that the most famous is “Sanctuary much for the buggy ride,” and that one of the cleverest contains the word Meretricious—like this: “Meretricious and a Happy New Year!”
Winchell, December 1930
Winchell credits F.P.A. with the “Theopholis” pun in this column but does not credit the “meretricious” line to anyone. His December 1929 column, the earliest print, leaves it uncredited too. Text as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗.
December 1929. Walter Winchell describes a “parlor diversion” of punning sentences and prints “Meretricious and a Happy New Year!” without naming its author. This is the earliest instance Quote Investigator located ↗.
December 1930. Winchell returns to the game. He names F.P.A. for a different pun and calls the “meretricious” sentence one of the cleverest, again without crediting it. Researcher Garson O’Toole posted the column to the American Dialect Society list ↗.
1933 and 1942. Chico Marx delivers the line in the March 1933 radio show Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel. In 1942 Winchell credits it to George S. Kaufman (Quote Investigator ↗).
1945. Samuel Hopkins Adams’s biography of Alexander Woollcott ↗ lists “Frank Adams’ example of a sentence embodying the word ‘meretricious’” among Algonquin wisecracks that were credited “by common but not too reliable rumor” (as quoted by Quote Investigator ↗).
The earliest known printing is an uncredited 1929 newspaper column, and no work by Franklin P. Adams containing the line has been identified. With the author and source work unknown, quotle.info asserts no copyright status for the wording.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Everyone who has been handed this pun
Because the pun came out of a group word game, credit for it has passed among several famous wits. None of them can be shown to have coined it.
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Most common creditFranklin P. Adams Unproven
Adams was a member of the punning circle Winchell described, but Winchell credited him only with a different pun. The earliest explicit credit to Adams that Quote Investigator found is a 1945 biography that itself attributes these wisecracks “by common but not too reliable rumor” (Quote Investigator ↗).
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Rival creditGeorge S. Kaufman Unproven
Walter Winchell credited the line to Kaufman in a 1942 column, more than a decade after he had printed it twice without any name (Quote Investigator ↗).
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Performed itChico Marx Used, not coined
Chico says “A meretricious and a happy new year!” in a March 1933 episode of the radio show Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel. Winchell had already printed the joke in 1929 (Quote Investigator ↗).
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Famous comebacksIsaac Asimov and Gore Vidal Reused
In his memoir Asimov tells of answering an editor who called his story meretricious with “And a Happy New Year to you.” Gore Vidal used the pun on BBC radio’s Start the Week against Richard Adams’s charge that Vidal’s novel Lincoln was meretricious. Both came long after the joke was in print (Quote Investigator ↗).
✓The earliest printing Quote Investigator found is Walter Winchell’s December 1929 column, which names no author. No originator has been identified (Quote Investigator ↗).
Context
The game behind the joke
In the late 1920s, New York wits around the Algonquin Round Table played a game: someone named a word, and the others built a sentence that turned it into a pun. Walter Winchell’s columns record examples such as “Hayakawa keep ’em down on the farm?”, Dorothy Parker’s “Jack congeal went up the heel,” and the “meretricious” sentence, where meretricious (showy, falsely attractive) stands in for “Merry Christmas.”
Lines from that kind of group play were rarely written down with a name attached. Credit tended to go to whichever famous member was most associated with wordplay, and for this pun that was usually Franklin P. Adams, whose column “The Conning Tower” was known for verbal wit.
Meretricious and a Happy New Year!
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Franklin Pierce Adams, who signed his work “F.P.A.,” was a Chicago-born newspaper columnist. His long-running column The Conning Tower began at the New-York Tribune in 1914 and ran in several New York papers. He belonged to the Algonquin Round Table and was later a regular panelist on the radio quiz Information Please.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented source
Earliest instance located by Quote Investigator: Walter Winchell, “On Broadway,” The Post-Star (Glens Falls, NY), December 30, 1929, p. 4 (no author named). See Garson O’Toole, “Meretricious and a Happy New Year,” Quote Investigator, December 17, 2010.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Meretricious and a Happy New Year’?” Last verified 1 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/meretricious-and-a-happy-new-year/