Scott from Copper Canyon, Texas, wonders about a expression he heard from his childhood in the American South: neat but not gaudy. He understood it to mean appropriate, but not over the top. The expression goes back to 1600s and has many variations. Early versions and elaborations include as neat but not gaudy, said the devil when he painted his tail pea-green, or neat but not gaudy, said the devil when he tied up his tail with a red ribbon. Sometimes the artistic creature was a monkey. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Neat but not Gaudy”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hey, this is Scott Ferrer calling from Copper Canyon, Texas. How are you today?
Hi, Scott. Welcome to the show. What’s up?
Hey, I’ve got a question for you.
When I was a young person growing up in the Deep South, I heard an expression some of the older people used, neat but not gaudy. And most of the people who use that kind of expression have now died off, and I’ve never heard it ever spoken since. And I was just curious if that’s something that’s unique to the South or if it’s something that’s common throughout the English-speaking world and if it’s maybe something dated.
Some yes, some no. That’s a lot of questions all at once.
Yeah.
What did they mean when they said that? Neat but not gaudy?
Well, when you’re five years old, you do the best you can to understand, but I always got the impression it meant something along the lines of it was appropriate for the use but not over the top.
I think that’s a fair definition of that.
Yeah, that sounds right. Neat but not gaudy. And the neat in this sense really means not so much orderly but something that’s high quality or fine. Good-looking, and it’s an expression that goes way, way back to the 17th century. And there have been different versions of it that are kind of odd.
The longer version is sometimes neat but not gaudy, said the devil when he painted his tail pea green. And tied up his tail with red ribbons.
Yeah.
Whatever that means.
Was that a literary reference or is that just a full expression?
Yeah, it’s been used off and on over the centuries since the 1600s, and some people have had these elaborated forms. And sometimes it’s the monkey and not the devil, which is really interesting. And one of the earliest uses goes back to a poet by the name of Samuel Wesley, who is the father of John Wesley, who was one of the founders of Methodism, you know, as in the Methodist Church. And so we actually have both father and son using variants of this expression in their writing.
Huh. So it appears it originated in the British Isles and transferred to different places where English people moved.
That’s right. Is there any instance of it being used in other English-speaking countries like Australia or Canada?
Yes. Yes, it has existed and it’s fallen out of fashion, I’m afraid. You’ll find it mainly in historical text and in people writing historical fiction. But it’s always had a little either very literary feel to it or kind of the commoner versions. Some people would just abbreviate it and say, as the monkey said, or like happened to the monkey, something like that, which refers to the whole expression without saying the whole expression. It’s just a way to abbreviate it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there’s also a Jimmy Stewart movie where he jokingly orders a drink, neat but not gaudy.
Oh, nice.
Neat but not gaudy. I want to say Zekefield. Is that the name of it?
That’s the other meaning of neat, though, right?
That’s a bad pun. Play on words.
Yeah. As the monkey said when he painted his bottom pink and tied up his tail with pea green ribbons.
That’s gaudy.
That’s gaudy.
Yeah.
All right. Well, thank you all very much. I really appreciate the enlightenment.
Sure. It’s our pleasure.
Thank you very much. Glad to have you. Take care. Bye-bye.
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