My grandmother (b. around 1900) and other people about her age used to use the term “red up” for “tidy up” - i.e., if a room were untidy, she’d say “we need to red up this room”. This was in a rural area of Southern Ontario - just south of Owen Sound for those who know the region. As far as I could ever tell, this usage was fairly confined.
But then, I later had a friend from Pittsburgh who one day used the term “red up” in this context - which was the first time I had ever a) heard someone my age use it and b) heard someone from somewhere else use it. He said the term was fairly common - but probably more so among older people.
Two questions:
a) is/was this used in other regions of North America?
b) does anyone know how “red up” came to mean “tidy up”?
a). I laugh at my fiancee every time she says it’s time to “red up”. She’s from rural Ohio.
b). I’m guessing it’s short for ready up, as in readying a room for company. Maybe then it should be spelled “read up” but pronounced in passive form “red”?
c). Hi Opal!
I always thought, the way she pronounced it, it was “ret” up…I could have been hallucinating, though…
I grew up in rural northwest Ohio. I never heard the term used in my family, but in high school once in a class someone mentioned the word. It appeared that most of the people in the class used or had at least heard the term used at home. The way they pronounced it sounded more like “rid up” (although given how long ago this was, I might be misremembering).
The term must be older than we think, and not confined to North America. I was reading Jane Eyre in high school, and towards the end, after Jane has been reunited with Edward Rochester(he’s been blinded), she helps to trim and comb his hair. “There, sir, you are all redd up and made decent” she tells him.
The first chapter of Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson, speaks of “the gear redd up and the house disposed of”. The person is speaking of cleaning up everything after David Balfour, the protagonist of the novel, has had his father die and leave him a small inheritance.
I’m from central Ohio and heard the term many times. I believe it really comes from Gaelic; for example reidh in Irish has a similar meaning. Scott and Irish Gaelic are similar.
This term is often touted as an example of Pittsburghese. Though I, a native Pittsburgher, never heard the term until I moved east of the city into a more rural area. People use it a lot here.
I’m from Northern Ireland and that word is still used frequently here and in that context.
“Come on, it’s time to redd the place up”
Though I never thought of how it was spelled before, its just one of quite a few (a brave wheen of) words and phrases that are still in common usage here and in my opinion are a loss to the language if they aren’t used elsewhere.
I’ve noticed the author Beverly Lewis use the term “redd up” in her Amish romances. Several of them are set in the present-day or nearly so. I can’t remember the geographical area they’re set in, however. Sorry.
“redd-up” only appears from the 19th century, but the verb “redd” as well as the noun, both referreing to cleaning up or clearing out, go back in Scots/Northern English/Irish to the 1400s.
I grew up in an Anabaptist community (not Amish/Mennonite, but coming from the same traditions), and heard about redding enough to find it completely unremarkable, though my parents never used the phrase.
I remember reading a short story in an American literature class in college that used redd up, and had a footnote with the definition. I couldn’t imagine who didn’t know what that meant, and was very surprised in class when it came up and the answer was “nearly everyone.”
Reading “That Hideous Strength” by C.S. Lewis (noted Philologist) one finds in Chapter 9 The Saracen’s Head, Section 3:
This quote is attributed to the character MacPhee, an Ulsterman (mistaken by many to be Scotch). The book was published in 1943 and one may safely assume that Lewis made a deliberate decision to include this speech to give the image he desired.
I’m originally from southeastern Pennsylvania (Lancaster County) and heard and used “redd up” frequently while I was growing up.
It seems to have come into English from Scottish, and before that from Old Norse - Norwegian, for example, still has the verb “rydde” which means exactly the same as “redd up”.
