# Which side is the term "Indian Giver" perjorative towards? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 6, 2019, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355 "2019-10-06T15:42:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/41 "2019-10-08T12:40:35Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > A random thing led on to by the discussion of “it’s Greek to me” and similar expressions – I’m given to understand that the Polish-language equivalent re something incomprehensible to the speaker: is to do with not the Greeks, but the Turks. Rendered into English – “this is all Turkish to me,” or “I’m hearing a Turkish sermon”. (Can Dopers with Polish background, confirm or debunk this as appropriate?) > > If true – one wonders why the Poles particularly singled out the Turkish language in this role: I, certainly, don’t see the two nations as having had a lot to do with each other, giving occasion for mutual incomprehension – though they’ve been up against each other in battle a time or two, e.g. Relief of Vienna 1683. Based on my last visit to Europe - “It’s all Hungarian to me.” A very different language largely undiluted by Graeco-Roman influences. Or, from _One Day At A Time_ - “Beware of Hungarians bearing gifts.” “Don’t you mean Greeks?” “Greeks, Hungarians… any one of those countries where the men dance together.” ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/42 "2019-10-08T13:07:16Z")
I was all set to post that you’re all wrong about “Indian summer”, as it’s obviously a reference to the days of the British Raj, when one could escape the cool autumn weather by travelling to India, where it would still feel like summer. But if this board has taught me anything, it’s to do my research, and the first link I found (from a British newspaper, no less: [What is an Indian summer? | UK weather | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/from-the-archive-blog/2014/sep/08/indian-summer-archive)) tells me the phrase was first used in America at least 80 years before British rule in India, and the origin does most likely lie there. However, it does also suggest the term was not necessarily pejorative towards Native Americans, at least at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/43 "2019-10-08T13:25:56Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I also like “little summer”. Maybe we should adopt that one. > > I don’t think the saint’s feastday will work, there being a lot less consensus about religious figures; but I wonder whether there is any cultural figure we could add on in that fashion? I can’t think of any right now, though. Just reference the approximate date, it’s what the feastday references are a shorthand for. AFAIK, nobody\* has bothered prepare a chart assigning the precise nomenclature as a function of starting date, total duration and temperature increase (min, max and weighed average). - I don’t think there’s anybody who’s gotten a burr up their ass about this particular detail and who combined it with the kind of obsesiveness I’m used to associating with Warhammer players, but there might have been. You never know! ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/44 "2019-10-08T14:24:55Z")
> [@](#): > > I think that is pejorative, though. It’s saying that Chinese people do things that make no sense whatsoever. Getting out of the car and back in again would make no sense if there were a fire, no matter what the culture was; and so is senseless also as a drill. I don’t think it was the connotation to me was “makes no sense whatsoever” as much as “for reasons we don’t understand”. I guess it depends on how tolerant the speaker is of understanding that people do things differently elsewhere for reasons perfectly valid to that culture. (And we do things that they don’t understand). ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/45 "2019-10-08T15:28:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No, the expression I used to hear was definitely arithmetic. That said, I’m aware there are other versions of the idiom. [Seems like the frequency of the two expressions is similar](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Chinese+arithmetic%2C+Chinese+algebra&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CChinese%20arithmetic%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CChinese%20algebra%3B%2Cc0), although “arithmetic” was used as early as the early 1800s. > [@](#): > > And when I was young, the idiom was used to say something was difficult. It wasn’t used to say somebody had an erection. Which quite frankly doesn’t make a lot of sense. That was just a typical off-kilter joke by Waits. I wasn’t saying it was a typical use, just that it was where I first heard it. (However, I wonder if his use of it in 1977 might have contributed to increased frequency in the late 1970s.) ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/46 "2019-10-08T16:28:10Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Never heard “Chinese” to “connote incomprehensibly”–I’ve always heard that “it is Greek to me.” Do you think _that_ is a slur that shouldn’t be used? Computer Scientist Arnold Rosenberg years ago wrote a fun [paper](https://people.cs.umass.edu/~rsnbrg/hardest.pdf) collecting several such expression called _The Hardest Natural Languages_. It’s a spin off of proofs of a language/problem being provably harder/easier than another in CS. In short: Chinese is the hardest in the sense of being directly or indirectly seen as harder by the most number of languages. And there’s a loop in one of the graphs. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/47 "2019-10-08T16:41:51Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > I was all set to post that you’re all wrong about “Indian summer”, as it’s obviously a reference to the days of the British Raj, when one could escape the cool autumn weather by travelling to India, where it would still feel like summer. But if this board has taught me anything, it’s to do my research, and the first link I found (from a British newspaper, no less: [What is an Indian summer? | UK weather | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/from-the-archive-blog/2014/sep/08/indian-summer-archive)) tells me the phrase was first used in America at least 80 years before British rule in India, and the origin does most likely lie there. However, it does also suggest the term was not necessarily pejorative towards Native Americans, at least at the time. I can see why somebody who’s never run into the term before might think it means “summer in India”. But what you’ve missed is that the term does mean something specific, and it’s not at all the meaning you’re trying to assign to it. Again, “Indian summer” is a brief warm spell that occurs after the first frost in fall, but before full winter sets in. It’s entirely inapplicable to any climate that either doesn’t have frost at all, or has winter temperatures involving only occasional frost instead of long periods during which the temperatures rarely rise much above freezing point. I have never heard it used to refer to heading south in the fall; that’s just plain not what it means. (The term for that, at least around here, is “snowbird”; though I don’t think there’s exactly a verb form – one would say ‘they’re snowbirds’, not ‘they’re snowbirding’; I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody say ‘snowbirding’ as a verb). > [@Nava](#): > > Just reference the approximate date, it’s what the feastday references are a shorthand for. AFAIK, nobody\* has bothered prepare a chart assigning the precise nomenclature as a function of starting date, total duration and temperature increase (min, max and weighed average). There is no one approximate date. When I first moved here it could be any time from late September to midNovember. Now I’d say any time from mid October to mid December (as first frost is later than it used to be, and warm weather is likelier later in the fall than it used to be.) And the duration could be anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks. Both date and duration vary considerably from one year to another. They would of course also vary with location; but in most areas there’d still be a lot of variation at any given location. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/48 "2019-10-08T16:43:05Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Based on my last visit to Europe - “It’s all Hungarian to me.” A very different language largely undiluted by Graeco-Roman influences. I dread to think what the Hungarians may habitually cite, re languages which baffle them… > [@](#): > > Or, from _One Day At A Time_ - > “Beware of Hungarians bearing gifts.” > “Don’t you mean Greeks?” > “Greeks, Hungarians… any one of those countries where the men dance together.” I self-confessedly live under a rock – all that _One Day At A Time_ indicates to me, is an evangelical-Christian inspirational ditty – with, one would figure, no Hungarian or Greek relevance; but suggesting definite mistrust of men dancing with each other… (The men-dancing-together puzzlement business, for those not in the know, seems pretty ubiquitous worldwide – I recall from Patrick O’Brian’s novels, Jack Aubrey being initially bemused about his friend Stephen, in his native Catalonia, dancing with a bunch of other men – wondering, “is there something ‘not quite the thing’ about this chap?”) ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/49 "2019-10-08T21:08:56Z")
Sitcom from the eighties with building superintendent as the low-brow joker. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2019, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/50 "2019-10-08T21:28:42Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Sitcom from the eighties with building superintendent as the low-brow joker. Ignorance fought (slightly). Thanks ! ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/51 "2019-10-09T10:05:31Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > There is no one approximate date. When I first moved here it could be any time from late September to midNovember. Exactly! That’s why Spanish has multiple names, ranging from early September from late November! You can have multiple little summers in one year. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/52 "2019-10-09T14:18:28Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I can see why somebody who’s never run into the term before might think it means “summer in India”. But what you’ve missed is that the term does mean something specific, and it’s not at all the meaning you’re trying to assign to it. Again, “Indian summer” is a brief warm spell that occurs after the first frost in fall, but before full winter sets in. It’s entirely inapplicable to any climate that either doesn’t have frost at all, or has winter temperatures involving only occasional frost instead of long periods during which the temperatures rarely rise much above freezing point. I have never heard it used to refer to heading south in the fall; that’s just plain not what it means. (The term for that, at least around here, is “snowbird”; though I don’t think there’s exactly a verb form – one would say ‘they’re snowbirds’, not ‘they’re snowbirding’; I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody say ‘snowbirding’ as a verb). No-one was suggesting “Indian summer” is used as a verb either. And I do understand the term. It seems to me perfectly logical to say, on the arrival of a spell of unexpected warm weather following the first frost of autumn, “Oh, we’re having an Indian summer”, with the meaning being that the temperature in England is surprisingly somewhat similar to what it might be in India at that time. And that’s not something I’ve invented all by myself, evidently other British people think the same way. It just happens that we’re wrong about the origin, that’s all. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/53 "2019-10-09T14:54:09Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > It seems to me perfectly logical to say, on the arrival of a spell of unexpected warm weather following the first frost of autumn, “Oh, we’re having an Indian summer”, with the meaning being that the temperature in England is surprisingly somewhat similar to what it might be in India at that time. And that’s not something I’ve invented all by myself, evidently other British people think the same way. It just happens that we’re wrong about the origin, that’s all. That may look perfectly logical to British people. It’s not logical at all to people in the Western Hemisphere, for whom going south (or north) for warmer weather doesn’t imply India at all. And it’s not a spell of unexpected or surprising warm weather. It is generally expected and not surprising, though there’s an occasional year in which it doesn’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/54 "2019-10-09T16:34:18Z")
I think we are violently agreeing with each other. As you say, you are describing the situation in North America, I am describing the situation in Britain, where warm weather in September or October is often referred to as an Indian Summer because it is relatively unexpected, and indeed it would often be before the first frost. I’m not much of a gardener or meteorologist, but in most of Britain I believe it would be almost unheard of for there to be a sustained spell of warm days after the first real frost. I am not disputing that the first use of the term was likely as you describe, just that I suspect it’s not most British people’s understanding of it, due to the different prevailing climatic conditions. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/55 "2019-10-09T16:57:24Z")
Dead Cat: Oh, OK, I think I’ve got it: you’re not saying you know what the term means over here, you’re saying that it means something different over there. What’s that line about two countries divided by a common language? – Nava, the thing is, I don’t think it works so well to call it ‘mid-October little summer’ or ‘late October little summer’ or ‘early November little summer’ or ‘mid-November little summer’ or whatever depending on when it happens in a given year. That does sound OK with saints’ names; but I don’t think it works with approximate dates. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/56 "2019-10-09T19:22:40Z")
> [@EdelweissPirate](#): > > Oh, Europeans were known for giving, all right. It’s not so much _that_ they gave as _what_ they gave: blankets lousy with smallpox. It was straight-up genocide via biological warfare. > > Reading through this thread, I see that poxy blankets are not what the phrase “Indian giver” refers to. But European settlers definitely had their own history of malevolent gifts. You know this is GQ, right? The smallpox blanket story is, if not completely debunked, at most attested to as a hypothetical conversation. There was never any need for Europeans to intentionally spread smallpox amongst the natives, because incidental contact spread it just fine. European genocide of natives was always much more straightforward in presentation, without the sneaky depravity of the smallpox blanket routine. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/57 "2019-10-09T19:35:57Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Dead Cat: Oh, OK, I think I’ve got it: you’re not saying you know what the term means over here, you’re saying that it means something different over there. What’s that line about two countries divided by a common language? Exactly. I wasn’t aware of the subtly different American meaning until this thread. So, ignorance fought, as usual. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2019, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/58 "2019-10-09T19:38:48Z")
> [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](#): > > You know this is GQ, right? The smallpox blanket story is, if not completely debunked, at most attested to as a hypothetical conversation. There was never any need for Europeans to intentionally spread smallpox amongst the natives, because incidental contact spread it just fine. European genocide of natives was always much more straightforward in presentation, without the sneaky depravity of the smallpox blanket routine. There was one documented case of Europeans deliberately spreading smallpox among Indians: [Siege of Fort Pitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Biological_warfare_involving_smallpox) ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/59 "2019-10-10T14:56:12Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > ignorance fought, as usual. Mine too! Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2019, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355/60 "2019-10-10T15:19:43Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > … > > The idea that Indians were given smallpox blankets is more a trope than anything. It appears to have been suggested and attempted only one time when Chief Pontiac was besieging Fort Pitt. Apparently one group of Indians were given a few blankets from the smallpox ward. Its unclear whether this worked or whether the natives already had smallpox. > [Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans as Biological Warfare? | HISTORY](https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets) > > … > [@dtilque](#): > > There was one documented case of Europeans deliberately spreading smallpox among Indians: [Siege of Fort Pitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Biological_warfare_involving_smallpox) I’m glad we agree. 😃 But the article points out smallpox had broken out in the area, it’s debateable whether the attempt was the cause (Since obviously letters were going back and forth from the fort to the general, so there must have been some traffic going through the besieging Indian lines.) it’s one of these things where someone pondered it, someone else did an unauthorized attempt, and the trope has become that it was a widespread official practice for centuries. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-side-is-the-term-indian-giver-perjorative-towards/841355.md?page=4)