An improvised line from Bill Murray in Ghostbusters helped create an English idiom.
By Charlene Badasie
| Updated
Bill Murray changed the English language forever when he ad-libbed the words, “This chick is toast,” in 1984’s Ghostbusters. The actor’s improv didn’t just become a quotable line from the movie. It also turned “toast” into an idiom that is still used almost 40 years later.
Referring to someone who is doomed as “toast” was traced to the scene in which the famed parapsychologists battle Gozer.
In the original script, in which Gozer was a man, Doctor Peter Venkman was supposed to say, “That’s it! I’m gonna turn this guy into toast.” However, by the time the scene was shot, the human form of Gozer was played by model Slavitza Jovan.
Bill Murray improvised various lines, including “This chick is toast,” which made it to the movie’s final cut.
The Oxford English Dictionary has acknowledged Bill Murray’s improvised line as the earliest documented instance of “toast” being used with its contemporary meaning. According to The Wall Street Journal, this usage is categorized as “proleptic” since it employs a figure of speech wherein a future state is portrayed as already happening.
Consequently, phrases like “You’re toast” joined the ranks of other proleptic expressions like “You’re dead” or “You’re history.” Searches I’ve conducted on various media databases confirmed the phrase gained popularity only after the success of Bill Murray’s Ghostbusters in 1984.
That September, the San Francisco Chronicle covered an election rally where a student referred to a candidate as “toast.”
However, “toast” first took on a sinister meaning in the late 19th century when “to have someone on toast” meant having a person at one’s mercy. In Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 novel Stalky & Co., which revolves around a British boarding school for boys, a student says, “He thought he had us on toast,” referring to a teacher attempting to discipline the boys for misbehaving.
Ghostbusters wasn’t the only movie where Bill Murray spontaneously delivered memorable lines. The actor also improvised a scene in Caddyshack where he portrayed groundskeeper Carl Spackler. None of the dialogue from that particular scene made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary.
