Learn English – Can the term “etymology” be applied to a phrase or only individual words

I found this from the blog everynothing (though his use of it seems not to fit his defintion):

I recently sent a text message to my friend that read "I was tryna cop some jont and my man cised me. You tryna chill for a minute?" He responded "Dank dank." This conversation never actually happened, but it totally could have. I have realized that my friends and I converse in a language all our own. It is not like a sneaky drug code. That conversation could have been about anything from pot to sandwiches. When I write I avoid using this crazy vernacular, but I'd like to take a moment here to introduce and maybe analyze the etymology of the way we speak.

Tryna- Literally means trying to. It could be sexual (are you tryna with that girl?) or platonic (I'mma go to six flags. You tryna?)

Jont- Pretty much any noun. It literally could mean anything. (Lemme see that jont. I'm tryna get some jont. Where's my jont?) Jont is a strange mutation of the word joint I think. (also Jank Jams Janx-A-lanx Jiggidy-Jont Jontpiece)

Finna- Literally fixing to, it's like tryna but it can't stand alone. You can say I'm tryna but not I'm finna unless finna has an object

Cise - To give (Cise me that jont) I can't even explain where that came from. . .

Edit, 5/15/11:

Did some more sleuthing and may have narrowed it down some. I noticed the adjective cised listed at Urban Dictionary (UD) as well. Among other explanations of it being slang for "overjoyed" was this:

a word used entirely too much by the 99.1 WHFS Sports Junkies (Radio DJ's in DC)

Since this matches the geography found so far on cise, and since UD's entries on cised predate its entries on cise, I think it's safe to assume that the verb to cise came from the earlier adjective cised.

Following the Sports Junkies lead, I found cised used 136 times on their official website and cise used twice. I then found their official definition of cised, complete with pronunciation guide, on their Facebook page :

Cised
To be excited; (occasionally) sexually aroused. If used in a phrase such as "cised for [something]," it can simply mean that the speaker likes the thing in question. The word is pronounced with a soft "s" (as in 'side' or 'psychology') and rhymes with "iced", rather than with "excised" or "prized." This term is commonly preceded by the word “butt-” which may amplify the phrase to mean extremely excited.

UD users attribute the Sports Junkies with coining and popularizing several other slang words and phrases including grasper, work your trick, money metal, Lou Holtz and hogsmoke. Given this, and the popularity this show had in the D.C. Metro area, I'll put my money on the Junkies as original disseminators, and possible coiners, of the word.

Tracing the Origin of the Term "Smartphone"

TL;DR: The OP was hoping to discover who was the brainchild behind the catchy name, smartphone; but as I hope to illustrate, smart phone with all its variants, had been around long before Ericsson's “Penelope” model in 1997. In fact the term smart has been often used in the world of advertising precisely because it encapsulates so many meanings in one short word: intelligence, style, elegance, class and modernity. Any possible contenders such as: PDA (Personal Digital Assistant); computer-phone; computer-functional phone, or multiuse-phone for this new generation of miniature computer phones were simply crushed by ‘smartphone’.

• Feb 1980
  
  Google only allows previews on this publication. The following excerpt is taken from a series of snippets I managed to piece together. I suspect that Burck's ‘smart phone’ was only used in the title as I couldn't find the term within the actual article, but it hints at a forthcoming revolution in design and functionality.

For more than half a century, the office telephone was a desktop fixture as immutably prosaic as an ashtray. There was no need to think much about it: it was the phone company's property, and its function was clearly defined, its costs predictable, its longevity assured. Today, however, the plain old business phone is taking its place among the vanishing familiar certainties whose loss makes life at once more worrisome and exhilarating. No longer simply a leased appliance, the office phone is part of today's upheaval in communications "The shrinking standard of living"
_{^{Bureau of Management Consulting, Supply and Services Canada., 1980}}

• 1980 This is not an ordinary telephone but a so-called "smart" phone which has been programmed to transmit a message to either a specified or central receiver identifying itself and its location

• 1980 The calling numbers keyed into the smart phone are shown on the display by the microprocessor so the user can check their accuracy. The microprocessor can remember a number and automatically redial it up to 15 times, if desired, to reach a busy number. […]
  _{Telecommunications - Volume 14; Volume 14 - Page 61}

• July 1980 Drop coins in this "smart" British pay phone and a microcomputer goes to work. A display shows the amount of money inserted. The computer deducts two-penny increments as time runs out. It also returns coins for unused time, or stores unused credit for the next call. _{Popular Science}

• 1984 Protel, Inc. of Lakeland, Florida is North Americas leading manufacturer of smart public payphones. In 1984 Protel introduced the first line-powered smart payphone in the USA.
  (Written by: The Clone
  On Friday July 14, 2000)

Protel,® Inc. of Lakeland, Florida began as a pay telephone manufacturer gaining a solid reputation for leadership when we invented line-powered, smart payphones. While it has been almost two decades since our first patent, we have continued to expand our expertise in Telemetry and Management Systems to a variety of industries…

• 1985 The SmartPhone works as a 2500 replacement, behind a PBX or plugs directly into standard jacks. The SmartPhone offers many features of electronic key systems, in addition, it gives small offices low cost two-line capability without a key service unit

• 1986 SmartPhone idem description

• 1987 the term ‘Smartphone’ loses the capital P and becomes one word:

The Smartphone III comes with an operator intercept interrupt module that detects non-connection. Data capability and rate tables are programmed in by the distributors. The rate table setting is flexible and IBM PC compatible.

Seven years later...

A refined version of the product was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator. The Simon was the first cellular device that can be properly referred to as a "smartphone", although it was not called that in 1994 source Wikipedia, Smartphone: forerunner

In 1995 a TV show called Computer Chronicles reviewed the Simon Personal Communicator and said:

This is just one example of the really cool, new, mobile computer gadgets that are out there now. Today we'll show you the newest, and the neatest, portable computing devices on this edition of the Computer Chronicles.
Video clip

Interestingly the presenter never used the term smart but he did say neatest which is a very close synonym.

The Simon Personal Communicator was the first cellular phone to include telephone and PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) features in one device but it was not until 1997, when Ericsson called its GS 88 “Penelope” a “Smart Phone” that the term was used to describe a phone with functions and features similar to a computer.