If It’s “Ring-Tailed,” It’s Distinctive

Hi there. You have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Scott in Brownsburg, Indiana.

I have a question about something my mom used to say all the time. It used to just crack us kids up, and she would often refer to somebody as a ring-paled tutor.

A person? Yes, it would be a person. A typical way she would phrase it is she might say, you know, I like your friend Cindy, but she’s a ring-tailed tutor.

What did that mean?

My sister and my cousin, I have a cousin that still lives in Texas, but they both had the impression that I did too.

That it’s not a negative.

It would usually be about somebody who was maybe got into a little bit of trouble, but not bad trouble.

Maybe somebody that was high spirited, maybe a little bit mischievous, but not a bad thing either.

Like an Eddie Haskell type, maybe.

That Eddie Haskell, he is a ring-tailed tutor.

Kind of like when you call somebody a handful.

Exactly.

In fact, Grant, one of the things I wrote down was exactly that. You know, a handful, maybe a bit of a force of nature.

Force of nature.

Yeah, that’s a great one.

Yeah, we sometimes put hurricane in front of people’s names. Hurricane Martha, for example.

I have been called a handful.

But not a ring-tailed tooter.

Oh, I love it, though. It’s not tooters and you make toots. It’s just the ring-tailed is the key part here.

Right.

I always thought that it probably had a southern connotation.

Yeah, there’s certainly something rural about it. I don’t know about southern. It’s certainly something rustic, maybe.

The ring-tailed part is the part doing all the work.

This is the one that something that’s ring-tailed is special.

You know, you can have a cat or you can have a ring-tailed cat.

And then, you know, it’s a special cat, right?

Because a ring-tailed animal of any kind is unusual.

So there’s a lot of variations on this.

So you can have a ring-tailed roarer, ring-tailed squealer, ring-tailed peeler, tooter, snorter, ape, baboon, mosquito.

I don’t know what a ring-tailed mosquito looks like or how you tell.

And you can have things like ring-tailed know-nothing or ring-tailed waffle brain or ring-tailed SOB.

And there are other variations on the ring-tailed part itself.

Rip snorter.

And a rip snorter can be a violent storm or an aggressive angry person or anything that’s outrageous or superlative.

So you can have a rip-tail snorter or rip-tail screamer.

And these are all kind of of a package.

They’re all about something just outstanding or beyond the pale or out of the usual or something that requires extra effort to handle.

I always wondered if it wasn’t something akin to a reference to a raccoon, maybe, because I didn’t know anything else that’s ring-tailed.

It’s possible.

One of the dictionaries that I’ve looked into suggests that it’s just a fantasy creature,

Just the idea that something that has a ring tailed is unusual because they are rather unusual in nature.

The earliest uses that we find are the 1820s and a reference to a fight between Kentuckians.

So perhaps a raccoon would automatically come to mind.

So, Scott, do you use this today?

We just use it as an homage to my mom.

Aww.

We’ll say something like, well, you know what, mom would call her.

My siblings or my wife would say, well, yeah, ring-tailed tutor.

So, Scott, I guess the real question is, what about your mom?

Did she fall into the ring-tailed tutor category?

She did.

She’s been gone.

She’s been gone a few years now, but, yes, she definitely did.

Actually, all her.

She was from a family of four girls, and they were all ring-tailed tutors.

Oh, that’s lovely.

It’s been a delight to hear your memories, and thanks for sharing this with us, Scott.

Thanks, guys. Love the show.

Thank you. Take care now.

Thank you, Scott.

Well, give us a ring, 877-929-9673.