"Sounds like a plan (, Stan!)"
"Sounds like a plan (, Stan!)"
(idiom, used to agree to a suggestion that you think is good: OxfordLearnersDictionariesOnline)
It seems to be of relatively recent origin, if there's really a sound origin, that is.
Main Q: What is the etymology of the expression?
Also,
- How well-received (understood and appreciated) is it as an idiom?
- Is it a regionalism?
- Is it slang?
UrbanDictionary gives no etymology; nor does OLDO cited above.
Solution 1:
Richard Spears, Common American Phrases in Everyday Contexts (2011) evidently views the expession as a common American phrase:
(It) sounds like a plan. What you say sounds promising and is a good plan. [Example 1:] DON: Let's meet tomorrow and settle the matter. ANDREW: Sounds like a plan. [Example 2:] A: We'll sell the sofa and buy some comfortable chairs. B: Great! It sounds like a plan.
In fact, I would describe it today as a catch-phrase or sentence-length idiom—not as slang. It appears to be especially common in the United States, but Google Books searches that specify the corpus British English suggest that the wording has gained a foothold in other English-speaking regions as well.
An Ngram chart from the undifferentiated corpus English illustrates how the frequency of "sounds like a plan" in all contexts increased in the years between 1920 and 2008:
But even this steep rise since 1990 is far less dramatic looking than it would be if the chart tracked matches for the years 2009–2014. A Google Books search for the free-standing sentence "Sounds like a plan" yields close to 300 valid matches overall—and the great majority of them are from the years since 2008 (which is the last year that current Ngram charts track).
Despite searching every individual match from a Google Books search stretching across the years 1920–1980, I couldn't find any matches for the freestanding sentence "Sounds like a plan" before 1974. The match that HotLicks cites in a comment above as being from 1940 is, I believe, to Janelle McCulloch, One for the Road: Travelling America in Pursuit of Happiness, which the Google Books summary lists as having been published in 1940, but which in fact was published in 2009. Likewise, another match, Dina Koehly, A Gift From Above is listed in the Google Books summary as being from 1960 but was actually published in 1996.
There are indeed some early (and correctly dated) instances of rather short sentences in the search results. For example, The Grade Teacher (1936) contains this snippet of dialogue:
MOTHER: Well, Bob [the couple's child] dislikes his work. What have we been doing to help him? Nothing. We haven't encouraged him. Now, if you and I showed a little more enthusiasm, then perhaps . . .
FATHER (interrupting): Bob would be more interested in his work!
MOTHER: Yes, that's just what I mean.
FATHER: That sounds like a plan worth trying.
And from Jerome Weidman, The Sound of Bow Bells (1962) [combined snippets]:
"I planned the novel, and then I wrote it, and then I had it typed, and then I submitted it to this contest, and then I learned they wanted to publish it, so I thought you and Mr. Sargent better take over. Told that way, it sounds like a plan. But it wasn't a plan when I was here in this office that day. ..."
But those formulations are still a far cry from the plain remark, "Sounds like a plan." The first definite match for "Sounds like a plan" in the Google Books search result listings is from Philip K. Dick, "The Pre-Persons," in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (October 1974):
"You know," Ian said after her, "if there was any way you could get me classified as a pre-person, you'd end me there. To the Facility with the greatest facility." And, he thought, I'll bet I wouldn't be the only husband in California who went. There'd be plenty others. In the same bag as me, then as now.
"Sounds like a plan," Cynthia's voice came to him dimly; she had heard.
The next exact match is a decade later, and also in the context of sciene fiction. From Richard Lovett & William Gleason, "Nightfall on the Peak of Eternal Light," in The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984):
He pulled the emergency release on his own tether, clipping it to Damien's suit. Wrapped the other end around his wrist. Thank God for lunar gravity. How much could the man weigh here, even with the training suit? Thirty pounds? Surely no more than forty. “I'll lower, you steady.” Suddenly he remembered who was boss. “If that's okay.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Sarah switched channels. “Christophe, Andrea, get your butts over here. We're on pylon—”
Thereafter, occurrences become more frequent, with two in 1985 (one from a Harlequin Books romance and one from another sci-fi story), and one in 1986 from the U.S. Naval Safety Center. Who knew that spacemen were such trendsetters?
Returning to Kris's original questions, here are my short answers to them:
Q: What is the etymology of the expression?
A: It appears to be a severely contracted form of an idea that was expressed in various ways before the telescoped form caught on, but all of those longer forms amounted to saying something along the lines of "That suggestion sounds to me like a serviceable plan of action."
Q: How well-received (understood and appreciated) is it as an idiom?
A: The proliferation of the unadorned expression in Google Books results—especially since the turn of the 21st century—suggests that the phrase is now very accurately understood and fully approved of by everyday U.S. readers and probably by other English-language readers as well.
Q: Is it a regionalism?
A: No, it's used throughout the United States as well as internationally. It may once (in the 1970s and early 1980s) have been a niche phrase among science-fiction enthusiasts, but it has long since outgrown any genre constraints and it is now used commonly in everyday speech as well as in fictional dialogue.
Q: Is it slang?
A: I would call it idiomatic or catch-phrase English. Because so many words that make up the underlying idea of the statement have dropped out of its current wording, someone who hasn't been exposed to it may find it cryptic; but none of the words in the phrase are used in a markedly different sense than they normally have, so I think it's more accurate to see "Sounds like a plan" as verbal shorthand, rather than as slang.
Solution 2:
The bit about Stan most likely derives from the chorus of Paul Simon's popular song "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover:"
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
[You] don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free