Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Go with the flow

 I have to say, the phrase go with the flow has a very late-'60s (as in: 1960s) vibe to me, as in: "Hey man, be cool, go with the flow." But I figured I'd better take a look around and see when it first came into use, idiomatically speaking...

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer provides the definition to "move along with the prevailing forces, accept the prevailing trend," and adds this for its origin:

...[F]low in [this] colloquial term, which dates from the late 1900s, alludes to the ebb and flow of the tides and probably gained currency because of its appealing rhyme.

The Idioms website reaches waaaay back in history for the phrase's origin, noting:

This expression was first recorded to be used by the Roman Emperor, Marcus Arelius, in his writings “The Meditations”. He penned a lot about the flow of happiness and thoughts and he surmised that most things flow naturally and in his opinion it was better to go with the flow than to try and change society. Then sometime in 1960s America, this expression was ascribed to the hippies, who liked outdoor activities but also espoused a philosophy of taking life easy, not getting worked up, not struggling or fighting. These people drew an analogy from the way they kayaked and rafted on white water to the way life should be led, by going with the flow.

Green's Dictionary of Slang (which is an awesome reference work, by the way) also points to a more recent idiomatic "first use":

go with the flow (v.) [a mass popularization of the more complex dictum of US psychologist Carl Rogers (1902–87), who saw life as ‘floating with a complex streaming of experience’] to accept a situation and make no attempt to alter it, to act passively.

Green's also offers up a quote from the 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe as an "early" (possibly "first use?") quote: 

No one was to rise up negative about anything, one was to go positive with everything — go with the flow — everyone's cool was to be tested...

Curious, I checked Google books to see if go with the flow appears in italics in Wolfe's book, and it does! So, I'd be willing to bet this was indeed a very early appearance of this phrase, slang-wise.

Hey. I'm cool with that.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay