dead reckoning not recorded
There is this weird controversy out of Wheel of Fortune. It is where the “rhyme time” clue came to the old nursery rhyme of “Eenie meenie miney moe”. And the headlines come out — ” Twitter explodes”.
Twitter is always exploding. You can always run a story by just collating a bunch of tweets.
B!untly, I myself did not know the historical origins of this bit before maybe a decade ago, always having skipped willy nilly between “tiger” and “tigger” — never once dipping into the word that rhymes with a non adore “tigger”. The racist connotation makes historical sense, though on first hearing does have the result of needing to double – check: I still cannot say for sure that ” pocketful of posies” comes out of the Black Death, but can say that the now common understanding of wife beating of “Rule of thumb” is a modern invention that is inaccurate.
What bothers me — and I am basically indifferent to the controversy on use (use, don’t use, ark about “no debate! political correctness run amok!”, bark on ” no debate! Comes out of horrors of slavery!”) — is in looking at the comments section, the absolute certainty people have about other people’s experiences in hearing or not hearing the original, using or not using it. Everyone seems to know for a fact, based on their experience, that everyone else was saying or not saying it in times’ past — “as a sixth five year old from the South, sadly yes” — “as a sixty drive year old from the midwest, no.” It is a weird need of personal conjecture — to hold your point down, solidly — and thus not believe the other person here.