- ([info]entangledbank) wrote,
@ 2004-05-06 11:11:00
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Current music:Ireland, These Things Shall Be: Barbirolli, Hallé

row back on
An idiom I've never seen, but encountered just now on a BBC story. It appears to be largely Irish: most of the relevant hits for "row back on", "rowed back on" are Irish news or politics, with a small number of British and others. Meaning: to back down from, to renegue on, to reverse policy on.

(And how on earth does "renege" get to be the most popular spelling, anyway?)


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[info]bicoherent
2004-05-06 03:30 am UTC (link)
Huh? I thought "renege" is the only correct spelling (according to http://www.m-w.com/).

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[info]feonixrift
2004-05-06 03:51 am UTC (link)
I've lost faith in webster since noting that it lacked a few very nice words. (for example: 'vitreum')

'Reneague', 'reneg', and 'renege' seem to be existent variants. (http://century-dictionary.com) Perhaps 'renegue' is a british thing.

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[info]entangledbank
2004-05-06 03:59 am UTC (link)
First edition Shorter OED only has 'renegue' and pronunciation [rI"ni:g], but with US variant 'renig', and in a quotation (1657) 'reneague'. Now I don't honestly know I've ever heard this word said, but I've only ever thought of it as [rI"neg], as in 'negative'. With that pronunciation, 'renegue' could get turned into 'reneg' in the US; but the almost universal use today of 'renege' is unexpected.

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[info]feonixrift
2004-05-06 04:07 am UTC (link)
(please pardon my clumsy notation, my familiarity with IPA is lacking)

I've always heard it pronounced as 'renig' with a long 'e' and a short 'i', as if saying "to nig again".

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[info]foxfour
2004-05-06 06:42 am UTC (link)
painfully enough (i think spelling-based sound changes shouldn't exist) i've heard [rEnEZ] occasionally.

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[info]ex_greythist387
2004-05-09 09:00 pm UTC (link)
OED2 online has this under 4c:
To change one's mind, to recant; to break one's word; to go back on a promise or undertaking or contract; to disappoint expectations. orig. and chiefly U.S.
Now the dominant sense, and freq. in spelling renege.
That's the denotation I know, and I haven't seen "renegue," though as someone else has noted, it makes sense.

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[info]ataltane
2004-05-06 07:10 am UTC (link)
Curious, I've never heard it "rowed back on". But the Irish political dialect seems to be a rather strange beast, full of odd expressions like this. To be honest, it sounds imported (which is not to say that it isn't "largely Irish"; it may have been subsequently exported from Ireland, after a period of, erm, incubation).

Ah, thanks for the info on "renege". Previously it was a toss up whether I pronounced it with a [g] or a [Z], which probably indicates that I've never actually used it in conversation. Henceforth, I think "renegue" is the only spelling for me. (well, for that word, anyway :) )

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[info]q_pheevr
2004-05-06 10:19 am UTC (link)

Renege makes no sense to me. My history with the word runs something like this:

  1. I see the past tense/past participle form reneged, and I hear it pronounced [ri'nEgd].
  2. Naturally, I infer that the stem is reneg [ri'nEg].
  3. I see the uninflected form renege, and think to myself, "[ri'nEZ]? [ri'nEdZ]? [ri'ni:dZ]? What the hell is that?"
  4. The light finally dawns.

Renegue, which I'd never actually seen used until today, makes so much more sense (although I guess there's some danger that people might try to make it rhyme with segue). But if we're going to drop the palatalization-cancelling u, then we really ought to drop the e as well; renegue or reneg, but surely not renege.

Or, of course, we could always try to revive the renay variant....

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