A Google Books search for the free-standing sentence "Sounds like a plan" yields close to 300 valid matches overall-and the great majority of them are from the years since 2008 (which is the last year that current Ngram charts track).ĭespite searching every individual match from a Google Books search stretching across the years 1920–1980, I couldn't find any matches for the freestanding sentence "Sounds like a plan" before 1974. It appears to be especially common in the United States, but Google Books searches that specify the corpus British English suggest that the wording has gained a foothold in other English-speaking regions as well.Īn Ngram chart from the undifferentiated corpus English illustrates how the frequency of "sounds like a plan" in all contexts increased in the years between 19:īut even this steep rise since 1990 is far less dramatic looking than it would be if the chart tracked matches for the years 2009–2014. In fact, I would describe it today as a catch-phrase or sentence-length idiom-not as slang. A: We'll sell the sofa and buy some comfortable chairs. DON: Let's meet tomorrow and settle the matter. What you say sounds promising and is a good plan.
Richard Spears, Common American Phrases in Everyday Contexts (2011) evidently views the expession as a common American phrase:
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