![]() What they found was a rich culture that in some cases dated back to the Middle Ages and originated in adult customs at that time. The Opies studied and interviewed children in England, Scotland and Ireland just after World War II, meticulously documenting the customs and vocabulary of their rituals, games, and traditions. #Oxenfree meaning code#“Ollie ollie oxen free” is part of what Iona and Peter Opie, in their wonderful book “The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren” (Oxford University Press, 1959), called “the code of oral legislation” among children. So the “Ollie” shout is really from Hide and Seek, not Tag. “Ollie ollie oxen free” is traditionally shouted at this point by the old “It” to let the other players know that they should emerge from their hiding places and start the game over. It’s when “It” finds one of the hiders, of course, that the found child becomes “It” and the game restarts. I was never a big fan of playing “Tag” because I was a small, weedy child and consequently spent a disproportionate amount of time being “It.” “Hide and Seek,” where children hide from the child designated “It,” at least gave me the opportunity to get some reading done behind the couch. “Refudiate” won the “Most Unnecessary” category hands down. Runners-up included “nom” (“Onomatopoetic form connoting eating, especially pleasurably”), “junk” in a number of senses, “Wikileaks,” and “trend” as a verb. #Oxenfree meaning software#Whee! Incidentally, the American Dialect Society (ADS), the linguists and scholars who study and document American English as it is actually spoken, voted at their annual meeting this month to declare “app” (short for “application,” a software program that runs on a computer, telephone, etc.) as the ADS Word of the Year for 2010. No, with this “app,” you just point your phone’s camera at the puzzle and it uses artificial intelligence to solve it for you. You’ll notice that I didn’t say for “playing” Sudoku. Isn’t there an iPhone app for that now? Apparently there’s now one for solving Sudoku puzzles. Dear Word Detective: Don’t know if I’m spelling this correctly, but I’d like to know the origin of the “Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free” shouted by children playing the ancient game of tag. ![]()
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