A Delaware listener recounts a funny story about visiting a friend in Maryland who asked him to retten up the house while she went to the store. He had no idea what she meant, so he just lounged around while she was gone — only to find out later that by retten up, she meant “tidy up” the house. Retten up is a variant of redd up, or red, which has a similar meaning in Scots and Irish English. We’ve talked about redd up on the show before. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Retten Up and Rett Up”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hello, how are you?
All right, who am I talking with?
You’re speaking with Ivan from Delaware.
What’s on your mind today, Ivan?
I have friends on the Western Shore,
Specifically Hagerstown and Cumberland, Maryland.
And on a couple different occasions,
I have been at their houses
And I’ve heard them use a term
That’s sort of baffling to me.
And the term is written up.
This one particular day,
One of my friends left and went to the store, and she said to me, okay, retten up while I’m gone.
And I just said, okay, but I didn’t know what retten up means.
And when she came back, she said, well, you didn’t retten up.
And I later kept talking to her, and apparently retten up in that area means to straighten something up or to clean something.
And that was in Cumberland.
And in Hagerstown, I was with a friend and her son was misbehaving and she turned around and said, you better retten up.
And I guess that meant for him to stop the behavior and straighten himself up.
And it’s just I’ve never heard that term in my life.
I’m fascinated that you’re using this version of it because usually what we see is red up.
And it’s R-E-D-D for the most part.
But sometimes it doesn’t have that D there.
But it’s a variant of red up.
And the word red is actually still used in Scotland and Northern Ireland in that same sense of tidying up.
And what’s really cool is that that term came over across the Atlantic to this country with a lot of Scottish immigrants.
And that’s where you’ll mostly hear it is in areas of Scottish settlement.
So particularly in Pennsylvania, but also nearby states like Ohio, Indiana, and even stretching into a little bit of Maryland, you hear red up meaning to tidy up.
And it’s particularly common in Pennsylvania.
In fact, in 2006, when Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game was going to be played in Pittsburgh, the mayor there had billboards put up all over the city that said,
It’s time to red up Pittsburgh because company’s coming.
Well, you have just blown my mind because my friend in Hagerstown always talks about her grandfather being Scottish.
How about that?
So a little linguistic fossil there.
Yes.
Yes.
That is amazing.
Okay.
So it’s red up and not actually retten up.
But they say retten up.
Some people do say retten.
Yeah.
Some people do say it.
Okay.
Well, I thank you.
Take care now.
Yeah, thanks so much for calling.
All right, thank you.
Bye-bye.
All right, bye-bye.
Bye.
Yeah, red up and red are still used in Scotland,
Like you said, in Ireland,
And some of the northern counties of England.
And it’s related to older meanings from the 1700s
Having to do with reaping or clearing and preparing land.
So not only has a history of several hundred years
In the United States,
But several hundred years more in the United Kingdom.
If you love hearing your stories about going to another part of the country and hearing a word or phrase that you’ve never heard before that really leaves you puzzled, this is the place to talk about it.
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