Soitenly was one of Curly Howard's signature catchphrases in The Three Stooges, the slapstick comedy team whose Columbia short films ran through the 1930s and 1940s. Curly used the mispronounced certainly as a cheerful, eager agreement, often just before a plan collapsed into chaos, and the word became shorthand for his good-natured character. Decades of television reruns kept the Stooges in circulation, and short clips later travelled through meme pages and soundboards, where a single word could carry the whole joke without any context.