Continuing our investigation into catchphrases, it is evident that many derive from advertisements -especially television commercials - which use slogans like "Vorsprung durch Technik" and "Drinka pinta milka day" to reinforce a message.

The first of these has been used to advertise motor cars, but petrol companies have been just as inventive, with such slogans as "That's Shell - That Was!" and "Put a tiger in your tank".

Slogans have been used to sell newspapers: "Top people take The Times"; "All human life is there" (plagiarised from Henry James to advertise the News of the World); and "Forward with the people" (for the Daily Mirror).

Drinks also generate a wide variety of slogans, including "I'm only here for the beer", "My goodness, my Guinness" and "Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach". Commercials for food have given us such phrases as "Snap, crackle, pop", "Don't forget the fruit gums, Mum!" and "Go to work on an egg".

Advertisers have been employing catchy slogans for many years. "Cleanliness is next to godliness", which was used in a 1791 sermon by John Wesley, was taken up in the 1880s as a slogan for Pears Soap.

"Every picture tells a story" was used from 1904 onwards in advertisements for Doan's Backache Kidney Pills - although Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) had "Each picture told a story".

The power of slogans was evident during the First World War, when posters appealed to public patriotism (or guilt) with "Your country needs you" and "Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?"

The men in the trenches responded with their own more down-to-earth catchphrases, such as "If you know of a better ole" and "Roll on, duration" (the cry of those who had volunteered to fight for the duration of the war). The Second World War brought us such slogans as "Is your journey really necessary?", "Dig for Victory", "Careless talk costs lives" and (my favourite - used by British pacifists) "A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end".

The prevalence of catchphrases in radio and TV shows and commercials may give the impression that catchphrases are a modern phenomenon, but particular phrases have been catching on for centuries.

In Wordplay last December, I mentioned Jonathan Swift's Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738), which parodied people's tendency to use catchphrases and other hackneyed expressions - like "Talk of the devil" and "I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth".

The very first entry in Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Catch Phrases refers to a French catchphrase used in 17th century English: " d'autres", which means "Tell someone else that" or (using another catchphrase) "Tell that to the Marines". The OED suggests that the phrase "I'll have your guts for garters" was even earlier, as there is a pre-1592 quotation from Robert Greene's Scottish History of James the Fourth for "He makes garters of thy guts".

A book published in 1659, entitled Paroimiographia: Proverbs or Old Said Saws and Adages, contains many sayings which are more like catchphrases than proverbs, including: "You teach your father how to get children", "Then we shall have it, quoth Judy, when her smock was up" and "I think thee was bred at Hoggsnorton, where pigs play on the organs".

This last saying has a possible local connection with Oxfordshire, as John Ray explained in his Complete Collection of English Proverbs (1670) where "You were born at Hogs-Norton" is explained by the note that "This is a village properly called Hook-Norton, where inhabitants (it seems formerly) were so rustical in their behaviour, that boorish and clownish people are said to be born there."

Hoggsnorton was famously used as the name of the village described in radio broadcasts of the 1930s by the comedian Gillie Potter (who created a catchphrase with his introductory "Good evening, England. This is Gillie Potter, speaking to you in English").

Catchphrases continued to appear in subsequent centuries, with evidence for "Teach your grandmother to suck eggs" from 1707; "All my eye and Betty Martin" from 1785; "All is gas and gaiters" in Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9); and "What ho! She bumps!" from 1899. The last of these is included in J Redding Ware's Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909), which illustrates that catchphrases were very popular among the Victorians. Ware also includes: "Hullo, features!" a friendly salute upon meeting an acquaintance; "He worships his creator", said of a self-made man who has a good opinion of himself; and "Voulez-vous squatty-vous?" - a catchphrase apparently originated by Grimaldi the clown.

And so the craze for catchphrases continued throughout the 20th century, with people taking up "And so we say farewell", (the parting words uttered by James S Fitzpatrick at the end of his between-the-wars film travelogues); "Can you hear me, mother?" (comedian Sandy Powell's catchphrase, which apparently caught on because he repeated it several times when he dropped his script); "Come with me to the Casbah" (a line which Charles Boyer did NOT utter in the 1938 film Algiers); "It all depends what you mean by . . ." (Professor Joad on the BBC Brains Trust); and the seemingly numberless catchphrases created by Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and Bruce Forsyth.

Didn't they do well!

Tony Augarde is the author of The Oxford Guide to Word Games (OUP, £14.99) and The Oxford A to Z of Word Games (OUP, £4.99).