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This is a popular question on various etymology sites, and there's no definite answer. While the green room is now commonly thought of as the place where celebrities wait before being asked pre-arranged questions on television, it originally referred to the off-stage room that actors waited in before storming the boards. The first written use of the phrase comes from 1701, indicating that it was in the theatrical vernacular during the 16th century. DeProverbio, a scholarly journal dedicated to the study of proverbs (or paremiology), posits that it may come from the noble colors worn by early theater companies in honor of their royal patrons. Michael Quinion's World
Wide Words, a wonderful resource that's been around since 1996, notes that archaic slang for the stage is "the green." Hence, the room that's just off the stage may have been designated the "green room." He also debunks the notion put forth by Word Detective that green soothed the eyes of limelight-stunned actors, since candles were used to light early stages. One of the more creative theories presented at the Internet FAQ Consortium is that the green room was commonly used to store stage shrubbery and grass and was therefore a nice soothing place for a Shakespearean actor to adjust his dress and check his wig before heading out to woo Juliet.
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