Zzzzzzzzzz
The term "absent-minded professor" and the character type was around long before the movie. This is a clear case of the work being named for the term.
Lessons in French syntax and composition by Williamson Updike Vreeland and William Koren; published in 1907
Great mathematicians are sometimes as naive as they are absent-minded. Mr. F., the learned professor of the Polytechnic School of Zurich, said naively to the students in his course: " Yes, gentlemen, the cental projection is one of the most difficult parts of pure mathematics. In short, there are only two people in the world who understand anything about it. ... The other one is in Berlin.
Another time, when the rain was falling in torrents, his pupils waited nearly twenty minutes for him, ... when Mr F arrives, wet through, out of breath and holding in his hand an umbrella, carefully rolled ![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
.
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for coming so late. I have been looking for my umbrella all over the house, without being able to find it." Whereupon, without hearing the burst of laughter from the students, he went and placed the umbrella he never could find in the corner, hung up his hat, and began the lecture.
Simply searching on the term in Google books will usually reveal whether it was in use before the work.
edited 9th Sep '11 1:45:38 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
World's Toughest Milkman
The original Disney version
came out long before the Eddie Murphy remake that most people probably think of these days, but yes, the term itself certainly came much earlier. However, I note that IM Db has an entry for a 1907 movie of the same name, so we haven't actually proved the case yet.
I have to agree, that work was named after the trope. This is one of the most solid names we have.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Nope. Doing an advanced search for occurences between Jan 1850 and December 1906 I still get 143 hits in Google books. The earliest appearing in that search seems to be this one:
The American educational monthly for the school and the family: Volume 1 (1864) - Page 23
I'm not going to bother searching prior to 1850. Both the term and the type predate the work.
edited 9th Sep '11 2:06:28 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
The Other Troper
Okay, the term is older. Never mind then.
Also, the Eddi Murphy movie is "The Nutty Professor".
I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Locking this up.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Dropping "The" from the beginning isn't enough to make it not named the same as the film. Plus it's NOT the only name we could use. Scatterbrained Professor could work as well, or Absent Minded Genius, both just off the top of my head.
edited 9th Sep '11 1:20:01 PM by DragonQuestZ
I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.