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RAGMAN ROLL

7/17/2020

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The noun rigmarole (referring to long, convoluted stories or procedures) is a Kentish colloquial alteration of the Middle English phrase ragman roll, which was a type of parchment with character descriptions written on it that was used in a gambling game where the scroll was unrolled and the passage read out loud. People in the Middle Ages did weird things for fun. The game, which was earlier called Rageman or Raggeman, has debated origins, but was most likely a name from one of the descriptions (that's ultimately French in origin). The current definition arose from a sense of rambling something off, which was eventually extended to time-consuming things in general later on. According to Google NGrams, rigmarole was popularized in the 1820s and 1830s and has recently experienced a resurgence in usage.
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9/26/2022 06:48:47 am

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Blair Matthews
7/27/2023 03:14:29 pm

This is inaccurate - the ragman roll was a Scots term for a formal document that had signatures tied in ribbons at the bottom of parchment (for example the Declaration of Arbroath). These ribbons inspired the mechanic for a late medieval parlour game in northern France and southern England called Rigemon le Bon, where each ribbon contained a stanza which revealed a player's fortune or misfortune. The players would pull the ribbons and string them into narratives, a type of interactive fiction.

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history. 

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