Talk:-rama

John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1873), under gibberish, says:

In 1823, when the diorama created a sensation in Paris, the people spoke in rama (on parlait en rama.) In Balzac's beautiful tale, Le Père Goriot, the young painter at the boarding-house dinner-table mystifies the landlady by saying, 'What a beautiful soupeaurama!' To which the old woman replies, to the great laughter of the company, 'I beg your pardon, sir, it is une soupe à choux.'

Does this 1823 diorama "sensation" explain the introduction of -rama as a suffix in English? Equinox ◑ 23:17, 11 April 2021 (UTC)Reply