Turn of Phrase: Life of Reilly

The Reilly Coat of Arms by Cameron Reilly

When I asked for suggestions about what phrase I should research for this week's Turn of Phrase, my boyfriend, Nick, suggested "life of reilly." I'd never heard the phrase, so I had to ask to him to explain what it meant. Dictionary.com defines "life of reilly" as "a carefree, comfortable, and thoroughly enjoyable way of living." Sounds good to me! When I googled the phrase"life of reilly", I found a pub in Baltimore, an article in ESPN, a movie, and a blogger-author of The Life of Reilly, "in-depth analysis of the Spider-Man Clone Saga," all on the first page of listings. What I want to know is: Who's Reilly?


The general consensus is that the phrase "life of reilly" originated from an 1880's song by Pat Rooney. The Phrase Finder says:

For example, there's the 1883 song, popularised by the Irish/American singer Pat Rooney - Is That Mr. Reilly? It included in the chorus "Is that Mr. Reilly, of whom they speak so highly?". Like most other Irish songs of the era, it played to the Irish audience - this one with a dash of anti-Chinese racism thrown in for luck (the Chinese were 'Reilly's' principal competitors for manual work in the USA at the time). 

This presumes that "Reilly" is a generic term referring to an Irish man, sort of a "John Doe" name, if you will.


Michael Quinion presents another theory: "H L Mencken suggested as an alternative possible source The Best in the House is None Too Good for Reilly, which was written by Lawlor and Black at about the same period as Pat Rooney’s song."


According to The Phrase Finder,

The phrase originated in the Irish/American community of the USA, in the early part of the 20th century. The first printed citation of it that I have found is from the Connecticut newspaper The Hartford Courant, December 1911 - in a piece headed 'Bullet Ends Life of Famous Wild Cow':

The famous wild cow of Cromwell is no more. After "living the life of Riley" for over a year, successfully evading the pitchforks and the bullets of the farmers, whose fields she ravaged in all four seasons.

The Phrase Finder says that the quotations indication the coining of a phrase unfamiliar to the general readership. The writer suggests that the phrase was coined by Irish-American immigrants, but that explanation doesn't make sense to me. There still has to have been a Reilly on whom the original phrase was based, right?


Perhaps there was.


A post by Dave Reilly on The Phrase Finder recounts a family story he says has been passed down through many generations:

The Riley bros were told by their da that the one who touched Irish land first got their choice of the countryside. So in rowing to shore -- as some sort of boat race was involved -- one of the lads saw that he was slipping behind his sibling(s). Rather than miss out on the chance of a lifetime, junior hacked off his own hand and threw it ahead onto the beach. And the winner, by a bloodied fist is... So the Rileys grasped County Cavan in the open palm of a severed hand thereby learning a lesson or two about sibling rivalry. I live on to tell the story at some time and distance from its occurrence.

....

After the incident with the hand the Rileys consolidated their "hold" (sic) on County Cavan. As befits such clannishness they minted their own money. This money was widely recognised for its value, even in England it was accepted as Legal Tender. The coins became known as "O'Reillys, or Reilly's", and as such, became synonymous with a monied person. A gentleman freely spending his cash was said to be "Living on his Reillys" or "Living the life of Reilly". 

 This beginning of this story is actually a variation of the Myth of the Hand of Ulster. There are several variations of the myth, but the general theme is that there is a contest between two or more men, either for land or, more commonly, the hand of a beautiful maiden (which, thinking on it, probably included some land, too). There is always race. In Dave Reilly's story the men are traveling by boat, but, generally, it is a swimming race. When one man realizes he is about to lose, he severs his hand and tosses it ashore, thereby winning the race. (There's a slightly different version of the Reilly story here.)


Do I believe that a brother Reilly lopped off his hand during a race in order to win some land? No, since it seems logistically, if not physically, impossible. More plausible, however, is the second half of Dave Reilly's story about the legal tender of the Reilly family. So, whether or not the hand story is true, the idea of a powerful family in Ireland with their own source of currency seems a far more likely origin for the phrase "life of reilly."


In fact, buried in a forum at wordorigins.org, I found a reference to an 1856 document that seems to lend credence to this part of the story. The book, digitized by google, is Willy Reilly and his dear Coleen Bawn: A Tale, Founded upon Fact by William Carleton. The story is about a handsome, young Catholic Irishman who falls for a Protestant heiress. 


The story is based on two historical figures in Irish history and led to the creation of many a bawdy ballad in Ireland during the time period that the story was popular. Many of the results of that oral tradition have been lost to the ages, but Carleton one such song in the preface: "Willy Reilly." The gist of the song is that Willy Reilly is imprisoned for being in the possession of  diamonds belonging to Colleen after the pair run away together. 


The girl's father says:


Good my Lord, he stole from her her diamonds and her rings,
Gold watch and silver buckles, and many precious things, 
Which cost me in bright guineas more than five hundred pounds. 
I will have the life of Reilly should I lose ten thousand pounds.


Colleen protests, saying she gave the jewelry to Reilly as a token of her affections, and the prisoner is released upon her word. The two move overseas, marry, and have children. I'd say that a man with a rich and beautiful wife is surely living a pretty good life, so it's possible that the phrase "life of reilly" gained popularity based on the life of this couple. 


Certainly Irishmen (and women!) who heard these songs where they were younger could have shared the ballads with their children, which could explain how the phrase crossed the Atlantic and ended up in the Hartford Courant. If anyone ever asks you about the origins of the phrase, "life of reilly," you now have a pretty good answer. Sure, it's an outdated phrase now, one you are unlikely to hear in everyday vernacular, I'd suspect, but it's a pretty interesting story anyway, right?


If you liked reading this, join me next Friday as I research another phrase and share my results with you. Want to know where your favorite word or phrase came from? Leave me a comment and you might see your word/phrase in a future Turn of Phrase feature. 

Turn of Phrase: State of the Art

For those of you who know me as a crafty chica these days, you might already know that my previous incarnation was as a writer. I used to write strange short stories all the time and read them aloud to my friends, usually when they were very stoned and receptive to the idea of some weird girl reading them about mad scientists, giant gerbils, alien mind games, and pony sex. I am certain there are people out in the universe who remember me solely based on the odd stories that they remember tidbits from... or, perhaps, for the excellent drugs I occasionally provided before said readings.

These days, I don't write very many stories or much of anything, really, save blog posts and product listings. The strongest drug you'll find in my system on any given day is caffeine. (Hmm... could the two be related?) But my current lack of word output doesn't mean I'm any less interested in words, which is why I'm starting a new blog feature called Turn of Phrase. Each Thursday, I will choose a common word or phrase and see if I can't find out its origins. This might not be as interesting as my short stories of old, but, who knows, maybe we'll learn something interesting along the way. Join me?

Today, I noticed the phrase "state of the art" on the cover of a book I'm reading (The Complete Thyroid Sourcebook... boring!). The phrase is generally not applied to anything having to do with art, or, perhaps I should say, is not applied exclusively to things having to do with the arts. So what's the deal? Where did the phrase "state of the art" originate?

Sadly, the phrase "state of the art" does not have a particularly interesting history. Especially when one realizes that the word "art" applies to much more than the artsy-crafty sort I'm so thoroughly immersed in these days. In fact, Dictionary.com lists an impressive 16 definitions for the word "art"!  I won't list them all here, but summarize to say that rather than art is more than paintings and drawings. Art can refer to any skill in human interactions (a master in the art of kissing, say), trickery, or, as likely used in the phrase "state of the art", art can refer to science and learning. (Think language arts.)

While "state of the art" might seem, at first, to refer to some previously undiscovered crafty wunderland, the word "state" in this case is not used as in "state of the union" but rather as referring to a condition or attribute: the condition of the art. Or, using what we learned in the previous paragraph, the meaning of the phrase "state of the art" is actually "the condition of the science." So if a computer is considered "state of the art", that means it is as advanced as it could be based on "the condition of the science" [i.e. available technology regarding computers] at the time it was made.

The first recorded use of "state of the art" was in 1910. According to wordorigins.org, "The earliest known usage is from 1910, in H.H. Suplee’s Gas Turbine: It has therefore been thought desirable to gather under one cover the most important papers...In the present state of the art this is all that can be done." Linguist Michael Quinion, of World Wide Words, suggests:

The suggestion in the Oxford English Dictionary is that the phrase started out in the late nineteenth century as status of the art, in other words, the current condition or level which some technical art had reached. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the phrase had changed to its modern form with the same meaning of “the current stage of development of a practical or technological subject”. It may have changed its form by a simple mistake, or by the process that grammarians call folk etymology or popular etymology, by which words change to fit speaker’s misconceptions of their real meanings. By the 1960s the word had shifted sense slightly to the way we use it now, which implies the newest or best techniques in some product or activity.

So, there you have it: the origins of the phrase "state of the art." Join me next Friday as I research another phrase and share my results with you. Want to know where your favorite word or phrase came from? Leave me a comment and you might see your word/phrase in a future Turn of Phrase feature.

Turn of Phrase: I Call Shenanigans

1966 board game available here

Last week, we looked at a phrase with Irish origins: "life of reilly." So, this week, I thought we'd examine a word that sure seems Irish in origins, "shenanigans," as in: "O'Reilly's up to his shenanigans again!" Dictionary.com defines shenanigans as mischief; prankishness or deceit; trickery. [I suppose if you are the one initiating the shenanigans, you'd claim the former; while if you were the object of such shenanigans, you'd claim the latter, eh?] The word is almost always used as a plural; apparently a single "shenanigan" just isn't possible. Some people use the phrase "I call shenanigans" to call out a prankster or, perhaps, an automobile dealer of ill-repute. 


Here's a pop culture example from the movie Super Troopers (2001):

Captain O'Hagan: I swear to God I'm going to pistol whip the next guy who says, " Shenanigans." 

Mac: Hey Farva what's the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks? 

Farva: You mean Shenanigans? 

Mac: OOOOOOOOOOOOOO. 

Thorny: OOOOOOOOOOOOOO. 

[as they hand the Captain their pistols] 

Like shenanigans themselves, the origins of the word "shenanigans" is quite mysterious and tricky. Some sources say that the word is an Americanism through and through, since the first recorded use of the word was in 1855 in a San Francisco newspaper. Since there were plenty of Irishman working in California during the time of the gold rush, it's not such a stretch to attach Irish roots to the word, but no one can seem to agree on the origins. I've seen the word said to be Irish, Spanish, German, or even French in origin, though the people at English Forums beg to disagree with some of those suggestions.


This question and answer comes from the archives at the Take Our Word For It word origin webzine:

Is shenanigans from Irish shee nanna gasne or from French for `I dunno'?

One source doesn't even mention a possible Irish origin, but instead, it indicates that Spanish chanada (a short form of charranada `trick, deceit') is a likely origin. William and Mary Morris note that shenanigans could comes from Irish sionnachuighim `I play the fox.' But both the sources mention German dialectic schinageln `to work at hard labor' as a possible origin forshenanigans. Apparently, the implication is `using trickery to avoid hard labor.'

A French connection is unlikely. 

Carly, of Carly Googles, begs to differ:

In looking through an extremely long entry on the roots ..., I stumbled upon the form sikanadenn, a Breton word for “a kind of whip or rod” (Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany, France). It was borrowed from French. “Whip” comes from “a crack (of a whip).” Even if French chicaner does not refer to smallness, we are confronted by several homonymous sound imitative roots.

The Breton word resembles shenanigan, which surfaced in American English in the middle of the 19th century. The resemblance is not striking but sufficient to whet a stranded etymologist’s curiosity. (When in trouble, even the Devil eats flies, as they say in German.)

A hundred years ago, dictionaries cited only the singular (shenanigan, not shenanigans). I wonder whether it is possible that some word like Breton sikanadenn, Celtic or not, an alteration of chicane, turned into shenanigan. Chicanery was first defined as “nonsense; humbug,” rather than “the use of trickery.” Today shenanigans means “dishonest maneuvering; mischief.” The two words are near synonyms.

 Here's what Michael Quinion, of World Wide Words, has to say about it:

Where [the word "shenanigans"] comes from is still a matter of substantial dispute; the first five dictionaries I consulted gave four different origins (Oxford Dictionaries — as so often — opting for the ultra-cautious “origin unknown”). The word looks Irish, and there was no shortage of Irishmen in the California diggings, so it’s plausible to suggest the Irish word sionnachuighm as the source, meaning ‘I play tricks’, which is pronounced roughly as ‘shinnuckeem’. Others argue it comes from an East Anglian dialect word nannicking for playing the fool. Yet others guess at a link with the Spanish word chanada for a trick or deceit, which is another half-way plausible source, considering California’s history. Yet another theory was put forward in 1948 in American Speech for an origin in Germanschinnagel for a nail that holds the rim to the wheel, which produced the German slang terms schinageln, to work, and Schenigelei, a trick. As the man behind the market stall said, you pays your money and you takes your choice ...

 No more shenanigians here for today... what do you think is the most plausible origin of the word shenanigans? Also, have you ever tried to type "shenanigans" a bunch of times in a blog entry? It's not so easy, let me tell ya!


If you liked reading this, join me next Friday as I research another phrase and share my results with you. Want to know where your favorite word or phrase came from? Leave me a comment and you might see your word/phrase in a future Turn of Phrase feature.