The expression sky-blue pink is what’s known as a “fobbing off phrase,” a playful, nonsensical answer for when a child asks one too many questions. Variations include sky blue pink with a finny haddy border (the word haddy meaning “Scottish smoked haddock”) and sky-blue scarlet, the color of a mouse’s fart. The phrase sky-blue pink has been around for at least 130 years and was popularized in the early 20th century by the Uncle Wiggily series. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Sky-Blue Pink,” Maybe with a Finny Haddy Border”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
We had a question from Liz Basquin Krause who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana.
And she writes, If you ask my father to state his favorite color, he would answer sky BluePink.
As a little girl, I thought that wasn’t fair because he did not pick a color.
As an adult, my siblings and I decided it was the color of the sunset, and it is a fond remembrance.
Is this a known expression?
Yeah, it sure is.
It’s got a deep history and often used exactly that same way as what’s known as a fobbing off phrase.
When a child or somebody asks you a question you don’t feel like answering, and you just give them some silly thing in response.
Right.
That color is sky blue pink.
There’s an entry for this in Nigel Reese’s book of quotations, and more than one of the books.
And he has a longer form, which is sky blue pink with a finny hatty border.
Fini hatty is kind of a smoked, a smoked haddock.
I think famous from Scotland.
Yeah, a town in Scotland.
So, a border of smoked haddock?
I don’t I don’t really know.
And he also has another version.
He’s got some quotes from correspondence, and one of them is Sky blue scarlet, the color of a mouse’s fart.
Okay?
Oh my goodness.
But it goes back at least one hundred and thirty years, that color.
Yeah, yeah.
It’s been around for a while.
Yeah, and it was also popularized by the Uncle Wiggly series of books in the early twentieth century.
But I think I like the simple version, sky blue pink.
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