High Jinks, an Old Drinking Game

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Erica calling from Traverse City, Michigan.

Hello, Erica. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Erica.

Hi, thank you.

So I have a license plate, a vanity plate that I made hijinks. My definition of hijinks is a lot of fun. I also work at a library, so it’s outside the library a lot, and I get a lot of questions once patrons realize that that’s my car. And most of them ask me why I’m saying hi to Jinx, or they’ll come in and say, hi, Jinx, or they’ll say, like, hi, Jinx, you owe me a pop. And I don’t know. It’s a weird thing, the different, I don’t know what people think it means, I guess.

So your license plate says hijinks. How do you spell it?

H-I-J-I-N-K-S.

Okay, gotcha. For you, it means lots of fun.

Lots of fun.

Lots of fun.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds like lots of fun. And you work in a library. Are you a librarian?

Technically, no, but yes.

Okay, gotcha. But you work in a library, so bravo to you.

I do. Some of our favorite people working librarians. I work at Circulation. And then, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gotcha. So I see lots of people come in and out. And it’s a small library. So, you know, everybody kind of gets to know the librarians that are there.

So let’s recap here. You spent money and took time and thought to put a word on your license plate that you don’t know what it means. And now you’re questioning yourself. You have doubts. After raising all this ruckus in your library, you’re wondering what you got yourself into.

I think I know what it means. I think it means a lot of fun. I have four kids, so I have kind of a larger car. And when they were littler, you know, we would go out and have hijinks, like a lot of fun.

Yeah, you’re pretty much on the money. I mean, it means boisterous horsing around or wild antics. It sounds like you get into some of those.

Right. And it’s a wonderful word that is spelled the way you spell it. Sometimes it’s got a little hyphen in there, or it’s spelled as two words, H-I-G-H-J-I-N-K-S. And the word actually goes back to, maybe you’ll appreciate this, it goes back to the late 17th century where it referred to drinking games, usually really wild drinking games that often involved dice. You know, you would fill up a mug and somebody yells hijinks and then you roll the dice and whoever has the number that comes up has to take a drink. And there are lots of variations about it. If you forget to yell hijinks, for example, you might have to pay up. Or if you refuse a drink, you might have to pay up. And as you can imagine, these games would get increasingly loud and increasingly boisterous. And hijinks may be related to a Scottish word, jink, which means to turn quickly or move nimbly to one side or to dodge somebody like on the sidewalk. And it also came to mean a trick in the high in hijinks may have to do with an old word that means to call in a loud voice. So you’re sort of summoning people to activity.

Okay. Erica, do you get reactions when you’re on the road too? That’s what I’m wondering. There was one, I’m trying to think of a synonym to hijinks. There was a person following me and I stopped at a rest stop and they followed me in and they had sort of a synonym on their license plate. We said we should probably go on vacation together, but I can’t remember exactly what the synonym was. Maybe roomies.

But Martha, those drinking games changed by the 1800s, right? They became more like a dare game where you kind of dared people to do a prank or a stunt. And if they didn’t, they had to take a drink. They might have to become a particular character, like act it out or recite these verses of a particular kind.

Yeah, yeah. They just got increasingly active. They had to recite what are called fessanine verses, that is that they’re scurrilous or obscene. And if they messed them up, set them out of order or with mistakes, then they had to take a drink. So it’s sort of a drinking game.

Well, that’s good. I’m glad I associated my children with it.

Yeah, yeah. Sounds like good parenting.

Yeah, it covers a lot of activities. But Erica, thank you so much for bringing your hijinks to our show. As if we don’t have enough, we appreciate it.

Right. Well, thank you for being interested. I’ll get back to what I was doing. But thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Yes.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Yep.

Bye.

Fescenine. Isn’t that a great word, Martha?

I love the word Fescenine. It’s a toponym, isn’t it?

Yeah. It’s F-E-S-C-E-N-N-I-N-E. It’s Latin from the town of Fescenium, which was an ancient town in Etruria, Italy, which was known for its ribald songs and verses. There’s these kind of offensive songs and verses about the famous people and activities of the day.

Fessanine. That’s a great word.

Fessanine. Well, get up to hijinks with us. Call us 877-929-9673. Or you can contact us by email, words@waywordradio.org.