Let French cuisine take it for a while.

Yesterday in the am/pm parking lot while I was putting air in my tires, a boy in his early teens asked if I would buy him a cigar. His hair was black and spiky and his eyebrows arched with hope.

“No way, Jose,” I said.

“I thought I might as well try,” he said. As he and his friends walked away, cigarless, I realized that one of these boys, in this Mexican-American neighborhood, could potentially be named Jose.  I drove off to teach a class in which one of my students does have that name.

When I Googled “No way, Jose,” I was led to the www.phrases.org.uk website which has this to say about the phrase:

In Chapman and Kipfer’s Dictionary of American Slang ‘no way’ is listed as a 1960s phrase and ‘no way Jose’ as originating in Village Voice. Unfortunately, they don’t present any other details so I can’t check that assertion. The first verified citation I’ve found is from The Washington Post, December 1979:

”I’ve got nothing against robots. But no way, Jose, is this guy going to win.” Read more »