Barn Burner.

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Barn Burner. December 19, 2017 by languagehat 16 Comments

I’ve always liked the phrase barn burner, which I probably first heard from sports announcers as a kid: “Boy, that was a real barn burner!” Merriam-Webster has a good explanation of the history behind it:

Today barn burner is often used to describe a sporting event or some other contest, such as a political race, which occasions a good deal of excitement.

But before this 20th century use, barn burner had a very specific meaning in US politics. The Barnburners were one of two competing factions in the New York State Democratic Party in the middle of the 19th century. John Russell Bartlett, in his 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, provided a lengthy quote from the New York Tribune, which explained that the name was “in allusion to the story of an old Dutchman who relieved himself of rats by burning his barns which they infested.” In this case, the Barnburners were so determined to get rid of systemic abuses that they were willing to destroy the system itself.

The Barnburners were the more radical of the two political groups; the more conservative party was referred to as the Hunkers (possibly on the grounds that they were interested in a hunk of the political spoils, or because they hankered after elective office). […] It has long been thought that the New York Barnburners were the originators of that term (aside from the occasional person who literally burned down a barn), but recent findings have indicated that the term began its life describing radicals in a neighboring state, Pennsylvania, slightly earlier.

Also, totally unrelated, but anyone interested in Indic languages will be as glad as I was to know that Language of the Snakes: Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India by Andrew Ollett, thirty bucks in paperback, is currently available free for Kindle at Amazon — hearty thanks go to bulbul for the tip!

Comments

1. Brett says December 20, 2017 at 12:07 am

   My high school chess coach once uttered, in entirely sincere excitement: “This looks like it’s going to turn into a pawn-pushin’ barn burner!” For the next two years, “pawn-pushin’ barn burner” was the chess club’s catch phrase.

2. ryan says December 20, 2017 at 1:11 am

   One of my favorite works of fiction is William Faulkner’s Barn Burning. It opts more for “willingness to tear the whole system down” than “occasioning a good deal of excitement.” At least in its deployment of the term. In the end Faulkner seems to come down on the side of civilization. But the energy with which he dramatizes the Hun suggests some ambivalence.

   I do worry about what this choice says about my relationship with my father.

3. Marja Erwin says December 20, 2017 at 2:42 am

   The university’s site offers a few more formats, but unfortunately, inflicts a lot of animation on visitors.

4. ajay says December 20, 2017 at 7:20 am

   Nothing to do, then, with a barn stormer. But I wonder if the connotation of “something very exciting” has sort of bled over from barnstorming to barnburning?

5. jjwk says December 20, 2017 at 2:19 pm

   Huh. I would’ve though Hunkers got their name from “hunker down,” as a metaphor for people who were so satisfied with the way things were that they didn’t intend to move at all — especially because early references to “Old Hunkers” indicate the term was sometimes used interchangeably with “Conservative” or “semiconservative.”

   Incidentally, a historical newspaper search turned up a March 1843 reference in the New York Tribune that listed several political factions: Conservatives, Barnburners, Old Hunkers, Pig-Ringers and Rutabagas.

6. languagehat says December 20, 2017 at 2:35 pm

   Well, now I want to know about the Pig-Ringers and Rutabagas.

7. Lazar says December 20, 2017 at 2:36 pm

   Damn, that sounds folksy.

8. J.W. Brewer says December 20, 2017 at 2:44 pm

   19th century American politics was in general a goldmine for delightful lexical terms describing factions. Locofocos and Mugwumps! Doughfaces and Stalwarts! Etc etc.

9. Richard Hershberger says December 20, 2017 at 3:46 pm

   My (current) favorite 19th century expression is “stemwinder.” Its meaning is close to the modern usage of “barn burner” but if used today is likely to be understood as just the opposite.

10. languagehat says December 20, 2017 at 3:55 pm

    Huh, I always vaguely thought of a stem-winder as just a long speech, but now that I look it up I see it’s “one that is first-rate of its kind; esp : a stirring speech.”

11. Brett says December 20, 2017 at 4:01 pm

    @ajay: I think you are probably right. My own impressions of the meaning of “barn burner” (pushing pawns aside) do seem to be contaminated by “barnstormer.”

12. John Cowan says February 22, 2018 at 7:31 pm

    Googling suggests that pig-ringers are people who specialize in putting rings into pig’s noses. These are more clips than rings, and prevent pigs from rooting holes in meadows, forcing them to eat what is on the surface, such as acorns.

13. languagehat says December 1, 2021 at 9:53 am

    I visited the Serenity is a fuzzy belly trackback; this is the relevant paragraph:

    What wasn’t mentioned was an 1843 New York Tribune article that mentioned other factions in the Legislature, including the Pig-Ringers and the Rutabagas. There has to be a story behind those (I haven’t had a chance to really look at it yet, but there’s a scan of some Tribune pages mentioning them here). But that’s not what we’re talking about now.

    Now I’m back to wondering about the Pig-Ringers and the Rutabagas.

14. PlasticPaddy says December 1, 2021 at 11:42 am

    https://collections.fenimoreart.org/objects/2018/ringing-the-pig;jsessionid=5AF202F8E2D086044ED1AB3E683ACCF0 This 1842 painting (or a cartoon based on it) would seem to be the source of the derogatory term pig-ringer. The painter was a Whig.

15. languagehat says December 1, 2021 at 11:57 am

    Mystery solved! And an informative text, too: “This scene is an accurate representation of the method for putting a ring in a pig’s nose, a measure used to keep the animal from digging under fences.” Thanks very much!

Trackbacks

1. A burning question | Serenity is a fuzzy belly says: December 1, 2021 at 1:45 am

   […] an 1843 New York Tribune article that mentioned other factions in the Legislature, including the Pig-Ringers and the Rutabagas. There has to be a story behind those (I haven’t had a chance to really look at it yet, but […]

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