Talk:close enough for government work

I am looking for documentation/examples showing that "good enough for government work" used to have a positive meaning. The etymology section of this entry is plausible but I'd like some references.

Does anyone have any references or examples? — This unsigned comment was added by QualityFrog (talk • contribs) at 21:34, 7 April 2009.

The earliest usage I could find in the Google News Archive was from the 1980s -- specifically, there's one or two offhand usages that look like they may be positive uses (or may just be people coincidentally using the phrase.) The first modern usage that I can see appears in 1982, and after that negative usage rapidly takes over. This doesn't prove whether it did (or didn't) start in WWII, or even whether or not it ever had any real positive usage as a phrase, but it does seem that its current usage really took off in the 1980's -- unsurprising given how attitudes towards the government shifted at that point. --Aquillion 01:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

My father and grandfather regularly used this phrase in the 1960's when I was growing up. In their usage, it meant that something was "ugly but adequate for the purpose". I have never heard it used in the positive connotation. Offhand, it sounds to me like a revisionistic attempt to try to cast the phrase in better light but I have no evidence one way or the other. Jdthayer (talk) 21:23, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

derogatory meaning

When I use the phrase "good enough for government work" (piped to this page) I mean that whatever work I am referring to has been done in a slipshod manner. See urban dictionary: "Probably not the best, but what the hell, at least we got the job done to minimally acceptable standards." [1] --Geographyinitiative (talk) 07:10, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I was shocked when I saw that the etymology and definition currently on the page seemed to have a positive connotation. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 07:13, 24 June 2020 (UTC)