"Rock paper scissors" vs. "Rock scissors paper"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Sep 13 21:41:20 UTC 2006


As a child in Saint Louis, I knew this game as "jon kane pone." I'm
not sure about the spelling, but that's what it sounded like. Since no
one knew that this name was in a foreign language, it made the game
quite mysterious, especially since the gestures had ranks, but no
names. Hence, they were not connected to anything in our reality.

I'm fairly sure that the game was played in the usual manner. Two
people made fists and made three hammering motions, chanting "Jon,"
then "Kane," then "Pone" with each motion. After saying "pone," the
players maintained the fist, opened the fist with the hand palm down,
or spread only the first two fingers. Two fingers beat open hand; open
hand beat fist; fist beat two fingers.

-Wilson

On 9/13/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Rock paper scissors" vs. "Rock scissors paper"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Rock, paper, scissors" is the only name I knew until "roshambo"  was mentioned here some time back.
>
>   Which is not to say that sophisticated game specialists weren't using "roshambo" like crazy fifty years ago.
>
>   JL
>
> Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Barrett
> Subject: Re: "Rock paper scissors" vs. "Rock scissors paper"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Scissors paper stone is the variant evidently most popularly known in
> the UK.
>
> I don't think I've heard roshambo for at least 20 years, though I've
> never called it that myself.
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> a cyberbreath for living languages
> livinglanguages.wordpress.com
>
> James Callan wrote:
> >
> > I realized the other day that, while I almost always call the game "rock scissors paper," it's far more popularly known as "rock paper scissors." (I know Google results aren't gospel, but 58,700 vs. 2,000,000 is a victory of several significant decimal places. Plus, the game's World Society uses Rock Paper Scissors.)
> >
> > Is there any regional variation in which order people use for the 3 elements of this game, or is this just my own quirk?
> >
> > Bonus question: is "roshambo" (450,000 ghits) a recent retitling of the game, or have people grown up calling it that for decades? I first heard the term a few years ago.
> >
> > James Callan
> > neologasm.com
> >
>
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--
-Wilson
----
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

--Sam Clemens

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