‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,’ has been a cultural staple for over a century now, ever since the phrase was first coined by author Elbert Hubbard in 1909. And it’s easy to see why; it’s a simple, concise phrase that communicates the value of an optimistic outlook even amidst the follies of life. In Hubbard’s analogy, a lemon is an adverse event in your life, and lemonade is the positive outcome that you can squeeze from those negatives.

In conjunction with this larger cultural connotation of the phrase, the term ‘lemon’ came to represent something that was passed off as a good product but was ultimately substandard. This originated from British slang in the early 1900s, and was influenced both by Hubbard’s writing and the sour taste of the fruit itself, despite its pleasing

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