Language expert William Safire searches for who came up with the phrase “location, location, location” in the Times Magazine this weekend after a colleague working on a wedding announcement said the phrase was attributed to a British real estate tycoon named Lord Harold Samuel. Lord Samuel’s 1987 obituary names him as the phrase coiner, but the editor of the “Yale Book of Quotations” found the phrase used in a real estate classified ad in the Chicago Tribune in 1926. Lord Samuel was 14 years old at the time. Safire said the context of the 1926 ad suggests it was already a familiar phrase in Chicago and phrasal etymologists are not yet finished with this challenge.
