rigmarole
pronunciation
How to pronounce rigmarole in British English:
UK [ˈrɪgmərəʊl]
How to pronounce rigmarole in American English:
US [ˈrɪgməroʊl]
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- Noun:
- a set of confused and meaningless statements
- a long and complicated and confusing procedure
Word Origin
- rigmarole
- rigmarole: [18] Rigmarole is a corruption of an earlier ragman roll, a term first encountered in the late 13th century. It denoted a roll of parchment used in a gambling game. The roll had things written on it, such as names, with pieces of string attached to them, and participants had to select a string at random. The word ragman may have been a contraction of ragged man, perhaps in allusion to the appearance of the roll, with all its bits of string hanging from it. Ragman roll eventually came to be used for any ‘list’ or ‘catalogue’, and ragman itself denoted a ‘long rambling discourse’ in 16th-century Scottish English – the meaning which had somehow transferred itself to rigmarole when it emerged in the early 18th century.
- rigmarole (n.)
- 1736, "a long, rambling discourse," apparently from an altered, Kentish colloquial survival of ragman roll "long list or catalogue" (1520s), in Middle English a long roll of verses descriptive of personal characters, used in a medieval game of chance called Rageman, perhaps from Anglo-French Ragemon le bon "Ragemon the good," which was the heading on one set of the verses, referring to a character by that name. Sense transferred to "foolish activity or commotion" by 1939.
Example
- 1. Take the rigmarole it puts users through when they wish to close an account .
- 2. So I went through the rigmarole of booking the tickets again .
- 3. She told me some rigmarole about the insurance .
- 4. I 'm not going through all that rigmarole again .
- 5. I had to go through the whole rigmarole of being questioned and searched before they let me in .