From the comments: More on redding up
Got a recent comment from a reader named Paul, who shed some light on “redd up,” one of my favorite Yorkisms. (Check out more Yorkisms here.)
Original post here: “Let’s redd up the blog”
And a post detailing another response I got here: “More redd up in honor of Christmas”
From Paul: “We grew up in the Glenwillow, Solon, Bedford area of Northeast Ohio, southeast of Cleveland, in the 1940s. We used the expression “redd up” all the time, redd up the table after eating, redd up the house if somebody was coming… it seemed to imply a little bit of haste, needing to get it done right away.”
He goes on to add: “In a small Swedish dictionary it gives ‘reda upp’ as meaning ‘to put into order’…! Perhaps the English goes back to the marauding Scandanavian pirates centuries ago!”
There’s a thought… a Yorkism from pirates, how cool!
