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Make Your Point > Archived Issues > RIGAMAROLE

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connect today's word to others:

My hilarious momma-in-law uses this word a lot, and it always cracks me up: "Well, we went through all that rigamarole..."

The humor and fun might come from the alliteration--rigamarole--and from the four fancy syllables that convey one simple meaning: Bull. Bunk. Baloney.

Now, if you're interested in pinning down where rigamarole came from, you'll want to know that it may have evolved as a variant of the phrase "Ragman roll," which, if you Google it, leads you down a rabbit hole of medieval parlor games, feudal Scottish history, and a character known as Ragemon le Bon.

Good times!

So as best I can tell, a Ragman roll or, later, a rigamarole, was basically any long, involved, tedious piece of writing, and from there, another meaning arose: "a long, involved, tedious process."

See if you can recall this close synonym of rigamarole: f____rol is any process or situation that's meaningless, useless, or ridiculous--in earthier terms, it's B.S.

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)

make your point with...

"RIGAMAROLE"

Here's the more common meaning: rigamarole is long, dull, overly complicated stuff in a procedure.

Less commonly, rigamarole is long, dull, pointless rambling in speech or writing.


Pronunciation:
RIG uh muh role

Part of speech:
Noun, usually the uncountable kind: "all that rigamarole," "this rigamarole."

Other forms:

You can use "rigamarole" as an adjective: "his rigamarole story," "her rigamarole style of speaking."

Here's a rare, alternate adjective: "rigmarolic."


And here's an obsolete noun that we should totally bring back: "rigmarolery."

Finally, there are tons of alternate forms of "rigamarole;" for example, an alternate spelling common in British English drops the first "a:" "rigmarole" (and the pronunciation, too, shortens to "RIG muh role").

How to use it:

When you're tired of phrases like "red tape," "jumping through hoops," and "bureaucratic nightmare," use the funny word "rigamarole," which helps you call attention to how a process is long, pointless, and ridiculous.

Often we use the phrase "the rigamarole of something:" the rigamarole of applying for a grant, the rigamarole of the Department of Motor Vehicles, the rigamarole of the club's induction ceremonies.

We can add an adjective: academic rigamarole, political rigamarole, gatekeeping rigamarole.

And often we just refer to "this rigamarole," "that rigamarole," "the office's rigamarole," etc.

examples:

In Modern Romance, Aziz Ansari contrasts the bygone tradition of marrying our neighbors with the present rigamarole of finding "the" "perfect" spouse.

"Don’t get me wrong — the proper sourcing of material is vital to research, but the rigamarole of punctuation and order is exasperating."
   — John Patrick Pullen, TIME, 3 August 2015

study it:

Explain the meaning of "rigamarole" without saying "long procedure" or "long rambling."

try it out:

Fill in the blank: "Thank goodness I'm done with the rigamarole of _____."

Example: "Thank goodness I'm done with the rigamarole of defending my thesis."

before you review, play:

Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first.

Tidbits and Titles!

I provide the tidbits; you provide the title.

From our previous issue:

Here's a quote from a book: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail."

And here are some terms and phrases that often appear in that book: Baker Farm, beauty, blackberry, Concord River, earth, forest, heaven, learned, meadow, morning, red squirrel, snow, thought.

What's the book's title?

Answer: Walden.

Try this today:

Here's a quote from a book: "There is grandeur in this view of life...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved."

And here are some terms and phrases that often appear in that book: adapted, allied species, become, believe, divergence, favourable, gradations, hence, modification, offspring, probably, resemble, varieties.

What's the book's title?

review today's word:

1. The opposite of the adjective RIGAMAROLE is

A. SIMPLE.
B. FLEXIBLE.

C. UNFURLED.

2. In his typical rigamarole style, he _____.

A. waved and winked at the audience
B. summed up his goals and his plans for reaching them
C. meandered between past victories and present pet peeves


Answers are below.

a final word:

Make Your Point is crafted with love and brought to you each weekday morning by Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.

From Liesl's blog:
   36 ways to study words.
   Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
   How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.

To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.


Disclaimer:
When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.


Answers to review questions:
1. A
2. C

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