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Rinky dink, rinky-dink

Posted by ESC on July 14, 2000

In Reply to: Rinky dink.. posted by ESC on July 13, 2000

: : Rinky dink....a lot of our clients talk about more rinky dink transactions..presumably they mean ..sexier ones, am I right?

: "Rinky dink" is like "Mickey Mouse." Small-scale. Bargain basement. A dog & pony show is a rinky dink operation when compared to a big three-ring circus. Maybe the meaning of rinky dink has changed. But that's the way I've always heard the term used.

"rinky dink -- Inadequate, insignificant. Crossover term." Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner by Geneva Smitherman (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1994).

"rinky-dink -- n. 1912, something cheap, tinny, or trite, (said to be imitative of the sound of banjo music formerly played at parades, but of uncertain connections to the meaning). adj. 1913, probably from the noun." "The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology: the Origins of American English Words" by Robert K. Barnhart (HarperCollins, New York, 1995).

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