The origin of the phrase is from a 1902 song "The Woodchuck Song", written by Robert Hobart Davis for Fay Templeton in the musical The Runaways. The lyrics became better known in a 1904 version of the song written by Theodore Morse, with a chorus of "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?",which was recorded by Ragtime Roberts, in 1904.

The tongue-twister is documented as "folklore" in 1972 at Farmington, Michigan.

It is used in the title of Werner Herzog's 1976 film How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck, a documentation of the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship in New Holland, Pennsylvania.

Chaitanya Dhareshwar

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?