It first began to be written down in the 19th century - the scholarly journal Notes and Queries published this in the February 1855 edition: Also, the word for 'one' in Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Breton is, respectively, 'un' (pronounced 'een'), 'ouyn', 'aon' and 'unan' - all of them sounding not unlike 'een' or 'eeny'. There is a similarity between the words of the phrase and some of the numerals in pre-English Celtic and Cumbrian languages for example, the oral tradition of the English coastal town of Yarmouth voices 'one, two, three, four' as 'ina, mina, tethera, methera'. 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo' is certainly a strange line, so does it mean anything and does curiosity about its origin lead us anywhere? Well, as is so often the case in etymology, yes and no. In more important choices - selecting who has to ask that grumpy man down the road for their ball back - the one pointed to last drops out and the formula is repeated several times until only one is left. Sometimes the child pointed to at the end of one count is the one selected - to be 'It' in a game of hide and seek, for example.
The last line is often topped off with a short emphasized 'You are It!' or 'O, U, T spells out!', which all the children join in with. A leader takes the counting role and, in the rhythm of the rhyme, points to each child in turn. As difference is unwelcome to children, the formula had to be sufficiently unpredictable to be accepted as fair. The rhyme is used by groups of children as a way of selecting someone to take a role that is different from the others. The best known version of the rhyme is the one that is now widely derided as insulting, especially in the USA, where the middle two lines originated:Ī more acceptable version has now established itself: which makes as little sense in Danish as it does in English but, despite it being entirely meaningless to them, the children in the area continued to sing it for centuries. An example comes from the Danish region near Kattegat, where the Jack and Jill rhyme, which arrived during the British occupation in the Napoleonic wars, was repeated as: Children appear to have no such concerns. This rhyme is still used with the 'N' word.Īs adults, we might be curious as to whether the words mean anything and what their origin might have been. There never was an accepted definitive version, so the children who used the rhyme were very happy to substitute their own words as the mood took them. What lies behind this variability is that throughout the 19th century the rhyme spread from different parts of the UK to every playground in the English-speaking world, but by word of mouth rather than on paper. Added to that, as far back as the 19th century there have been variants of the rhyme which are so dissimilar to our current version as to be scarcely recognisable - 'Hana, mana, mona, mike' (from New York) and 'Eetern, feetern, peeny, pump' (from Scotland) and many of these now have local variants and words added from other languages. I've opted for 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo' but there are many others - 'Eenie, meenie, miney, moe', 'Eany, meany, miney, mo' and so on.
Of all of the phrases and idioms in the English language 'eeny, meenie, miny, mo' must be the one with the widest variety of spellings.
What's the origin of the phrase 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo'? The first line of a popular children's counting rhyme. Betting and luck What's the meaning of the phrase 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo'?.
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