# Enie, Minie, Miney, Meaux **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 2, 2014, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484 "2014-05-02T03:56:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/81 "2014-05-06T04:49:38Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Growing up in the northeast, it was completely OK to say the rhyme, but I only ever heard tiger as a kid. Here’s the rhyme we used (and my kids still use): > > Eeny meeny miney moe > Catch a tiger by the toe > If he hollers, let him go > My mother says to pick this one > And out goes “y” “o” “u” Yep. This is what I am familiar with as well. Long Island/New York City here. I have \*never \*heard the nigger version in real life. The only place I’ve ever even seen that is here on this board. In fact I’ve never heard any colloquial sayings that use the word “nigger” like “nigger in the woodpile” or “nigger-rigged” or anything like that ever spoken aloud. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/82 "2014-05-06T05:00:46Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > Yep. This is what I am familiar with as well. Long Island/New York City here. I have \*never \*heard the nigger version in real life. The only place I’ve ever even seen that is here on this board. In fact I’ve never heard any colloquial sayings that use the word “nigger” like “nigger in the woodpile” or “nigger-rigged” or anything like that ever spoken aloud. Never heard of “nigger in the woodpile,” nor do I know what it means (though I will in a second when I look it up), but “nigger-rigged” was not unheard of (though “jerry-rigged” is the term I’m most familiar with.) That also reminds me, there was a rough version of basketball some people played where fouls weren’t called that was known as “niggerball” in the neighborhood. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/83 "2014-05-06T06:42:51Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Never heard of “nigger in the woodpile,” nor do I know what it means (though I will in a second when I look it up), but “nigger-rigged” was not unheard of (though “jerry-rigged” is the term I’m most familiar with.) That also reminds me, there was a rough version of basketball some people played where fouls weren’t called that was known as “niggerball” in the neighborhood. A sanitized version of “nigger-rigged” that I’ve heard is “afro-engineered.” ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/84 "2014-05-06T07:17:42Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Never heard of “nigger in the woodpile,” nor do I know what it means (though I will in a second when I look it up) Somewhat the same as ‘fly in the ointment’ or ‘gremlin in the system’. My boss at my previous place of work was using this one as recently as five years ago (probably still is now). ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2014, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/85 "2014-05-06T07:46:25Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > If they really cared, they’d take the time to do it right the first time around rather than run damage control after the fact. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jeremy Clarkson - it sounds like maybe not - his onscreen persona (and maybe IRL too), he is the archetypical bloke-ish, brash, opinionated lout. It’s not so much a question of whether he cares or not about any specific issue, but in fact, whether the issue even exists on his radar. If he’d thought it through deeply enough in advance, he’d probably have just tossed a coin instead of using this rhyme. But he is neither a deep, nor particularly forward-thinking person, and so he frequently blunders into trouble of this and many other kinds. Not sure what you can actually do about that. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/86 "2014-05-07T08:27:10Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > OP, what’s with the mustard in the hed? You lost me again. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/87 "2014-05-07T09:56:50Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > You lost me again. I’m guessing that it’s Leo-speak for “why does the thread title employ French spelling?”, but I’m only a beginner at the language. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/88 "2014-05-07T10:15:52Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > I wonder if this footage was leaked by someone in the TV industry, fed up with (in their view) _Top Gear_ getting away with another borderline-racist remark. There was slope-gate only a few weeks ago, and the lazy Mexicans one before that. Maybe someone recalled that they had this eeny-meeny clip on tape somewhere, and decided it was time to get Clarkson. Because in isolation, it doesn’t seem that newsworthy to me. As mentioned already, it was probably just Clarkson’s ingrained childhood memory of the rhyme kicking in. > The ‘slope’ remark was worse, because that seemed quite deliberate, complete with knowing pause. In my opinion, he’s not so much a racist as simply your usual haughty westerner poking fun at Asians, Africans, Arabs, etc. A bit like Teri Hatcher in “Desperate Housewives” asking her doctor for an (American) diploma in medicine, to make sure he didn’t get his from the Philippines. Back to Clarkson, one instance that cracked me up was one with a Malaysian-made car: “It was made in a jungle clearing by a man who used to pull an ox!” ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/89 "2014-05-07T11:53:00Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > Yep. This is what I am familiar with as well. Long Island/New York City here. I have \*never \*heard the nigger version in real life. The only place I’ve ever even seen that is here on this board. In fact I’ve never heard any colloquial sayings that use the word “nigger” like “nigger in the woodpile” or “nigger-rigged” or anything like that ever spoken aloud. I am guessing that that is a function of age or when you grew up. Growing up in the 1950s, I first heard “tiger” in the eeny rhyme some time around 1970 and figured that it was a deliberate effort to “clean up” the rhyme. (At about the same time, Morris Turner ran a strip of his Wee Pals comic in which one of the kids (a multi-racial group), began counting "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, . . . " and Randy, one of the black kids, walked off saying that he was not going to enjoy the game.) Up until the 1970s, I often heard “nigger in the woodpile.” “Nigger-rigged” is a phrase I rarely heard and, again, not since the early 1970s, but I knew a couple of old-time maintenance men who used it. The crews of the ships on which I was a sailor (1971, 1972) routinely called timberheads “niggerheads.” (I actually had to look up their “real” name after I got off the boat at the end of my first summer. None of the guys ever said anything but nigger head.) (Side note on [jury-rigged and jerry-built](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-jur1.htm).) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/90 "2014-05-07T14:50:08Z")
I also learned it as Tiger, from children’s television programming, with a variation that I’ve not seen mentioned. For more than two items, it was a multi-verse rhyme. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe Catch a tiger by the toe If he hollers, make him pay Fifty dollars every day My mother told me to choose the very best one And you are not it. The one I think sounds most original ends with If he hollers, let him go Eeny Meeny, Miney, Mo. BTW, anyone else remember figuring out how it would end from the beginning and either skipping the rhyme or deliberately starting with the one you wanted? ---
**Author:** ![Fossil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/47e85d/32.png) [@Fossil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fossil)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2014, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/91 "2014-05-08T12:14:06Z")
I grew up in Australia in the '80s and learnt the n-word version. Our version ended with "if he hollers, let him go. Eeny, Meeny, Miney Mo. I was always confused by it, because I thought it was nicker and assumed it was talking about catching someone stealing. It never made sense to me to let him go just for hollering. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2014, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/92 "2014-05-08T12:52:47Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > BTW, anyone else remember figuring out how it would end from the beginning and either skipping the rhyme or deliberately starting with the one you wanted? Not exactly, but I remember always being puzzled about how people thought that something so formulaic could produce a random result. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2014, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/93 "2014-05-08T12:58:44Z")
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe in _Pulp Fiction._ (NSFW) [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/S8kPqAV_74M/maxresdefault.jpg "Bring Out the Gimp - Pulp Fiction (9/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8kPqAV_74M) ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2014, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484/94 "2014-05-08T13:12:13Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Not exactly, but I remember always being puzzled about how people thought that something so formulaic could produce a random result. If you have a counting-out rhyme and a varying number of participants from time to time, you may be aware that the result should be predictable but not know the outcome well enough to be able to predict it at the time. That’s generally good enough for nine-year-olds, in my experience. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/enie-minie-miney-meaux/687484.md?page=4)