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#13765 12/24/00 09:22 PM
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A chum of mine in the Mother County used the phrase "right as rain" in a recent note to me. This stirred my sluggish brain to wonder "what is so right about rain?".

Any brilliant ideas?






#13766 12/25/00 06:35 AM
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"what is so right about rain?".

Perhaps it was coined in the midst of a shower after a seven-year drought in the Australian outback?



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#13767 12/25/00 09:59 AM
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Michael Quinlon to the rescue again:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-rig1.htm

Bingley


Bingley
#13768 12/25/00 04:04 PM
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...and neat as a pin.

They don't seem to make much sense, but we all know what they mean. Curiouser and curiouser.



#13769 12/25/00 08:45 PM
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Means normal. As in everything is as normal as the existence of rain.


But there's a dissenting opinion. I did a google search and came up with this. I'm nopt certain whether I accept it, but it's out there. I also laooked up right in OED -- goes on for pages, and I scanned quickly without coming up with right as rain.



Consider the phrase “right as rain”.  Someone might say, “I felt like
the sun was going to come out, and I was right as rain.”  Aside from the
mixed metaphor, why “right as rain”?  What does correctness have to do
with rain?  Nowadays in the English language “right as rain” is a kind
of opaque cliché.  Perhaps its basic meaning can be expressed as
“straight as rain”, or “straight as rain falls”, aside from effects
winds may have.  Years ago, people used to call straight lines in
English “right lines”, derived no doubt from the Latin linea recta, the
term once in common use.  The words “right” and “recta” appear to have
come from an Indo-European root which means “to move in a straight
line.”  The metaphor plays on a resonance between geometric straightness
and correctness of judgment.  The basis for this metaphor appears to
have been propagated by way of Indo-European languages for thousands of
years.  It seems to work by virtue of some underlying, hidden process
that takes place when we acquire an Indo-European language.


TEd
#13770 12/25/00 10:09 PM
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All Micheal's website does is raise more questions for me: e.g. "right as a trivet"?




#13771 12/25/00 10:11 PM
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Wouldn't it be more sensible to say "neat as that which is pinned"?




#13772 12/26/00 04:34 AM
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teD>I also laooked up right in OED -- goes on for pages, and I scanned quickly without coming up with right as rain.

here's what having a searchable OED turns up:

14b. In good health and spirits; sound, well, comfortable. Now chiefly Austral. and N.Z. colloq. (influenced by all right: see sense 15c below), exc. in various colloq. phrases, as right as my glove, ninepence, rain (see also sense 15a below), a trivet, etc.

15a. In a satisfactory or proper state; in good order. to get+right, to set in order. to make it right, to square or settle matters. Also in colloq. phr. right as rain (see also sense 13b above).

FS>All Micheal's website does is raise more questions for me: e.g. "right as a trivet"?

that does indeed sound strange, but explaining 'right as rain' as an alliterative variation on a theme sounds quite sensible.



#13773 12/26/00 12:26 PM
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Perhaps the original was coined by a monarch, as "right as reign", or something similar. More likely, I think, is that it came about as a happenstance of conversation in an
agrarian culture, and became commonplace because of the alliteration.

Most interesting to me was Quinlon's 'right as an adamant'
(thank you, Bingley, for the link), adamant being at the time a "lodestone or magnet". Nowadays, if we speak adamantly, it means we stick tightly to what we are saying!
Cool!


#13774 12/26/00 12:32 PM
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In reply to:

Most interesting to me was Quinlon's 'right as an adamant'
(thank you, Bingley, for the link), adamant being at the time a "lodestone or magnet". Nowadays, if we speak adamantly, it means we stick tightly to what we are saying!
Cool!


Whereas when I read that phrase, my mind leapt to diamonds, as I still like the word adamant for diamond. The OED reference to the phrase right as rain to being now chiefly Australian and New Zealand colloquial would explain why my relatives in those countries use the phrase so liberally.



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