couch potato [1970s] Someone who spends all day at home sitting in front of the television can be described as a couch potato. The phrase was coined in the US around 1976. It is actually a more ingenious expression than it might seem: a potato is a type of tuber (a vegetable that grows from a thick underground stem), and the slang term boob tuber was used at the time to refer to someone who was addicted to the boob tube or television. See also boob. Couch itself is Middle English and comes via Old French from Latin collocare ‘lay in place’.