Brownie points

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>I assume Doug is referring to a 1951 L.A. Times citation, which is not
>mentioned in Michael Quinion's piece (he mentions two 1954 cites from
>Newspaperarchive).  The 1951 article is interesting, in that it doesn't
>mention "Brownies" (or capitalize the term), instead relating "brownie
>points" to the older sense of "brownie" as an elfin spirit:
>
>-----
>Los Angeles Times, Mar 15, 1951, p. A5
>Brownie Points--a New Measure of a Husband
>By Marvin Miles
>
>I first heard about them when the chap standing next to me in the elevator
>pulled a letter from his pocket, looked at it in dismay and muttered:
>"More lost brownie points."
>Figuring him for an eccentric, I forgot about them until that evening when
>one of the boys looked soulfully into the foam brimming his glass and said
>solemnly:
>"I should have been home two hours ago ... I'll never catch up on my
>brownie points."
>Brownie points! What esoteric cult was this that immersed men in pixie
>mathematics?
>"What are you talking about?" I asked.
>"Brownie points," he said. "You either have 'em or you don't. Mostly you
>don't. But if you work hard you sometimes get even. I never heard of
>anyone getting ahead on 'em.
>"Are you feeling all right?"
>"Sure, sure. I'm just worried about my points, that's all."
>"What's this genie geometry all about?"
>"You don't know about brownie points? All my buddies keep score. In fact
>every married male should know about 'em. It's a way of figuring where you
>stand with the little woman -- favor or disfavor. Started way back in the
>days of the leprechauns, I suppose, long before there were any doghouses."
>[...]
>"If a leprechaun figured out brownie points," I mused, "you can bet it was
>a girl leprechaun, some scheming sprite who wanted to tie up her guy's
>conscience in addition and subtraction -- mostly subtraction."
>-----
>
>So if the Brownie system of merits/demerits is the ultimate source of the
>expression, then there were at least two subsequent reinterpretations:
>"brownie" as a euphemism for "brown-nosing", and "brownie" in the elfin
>sense. (Or, as Michael mentions, these could all be reinterpretations of
>the voucher system of the Curtis Publishing Co.)

That's right, that's the earliest I've seen. When etymologizing I believe
in trying to account for the earliest instances first (unless there's a
question of anomaly or discontinuity). "Brownie points" in this piece are
units of a wife's favor; in subsequent items they are notional units of
somebody's (boss's, teacher's, etc.) favor.

The derivation from a point awarded to a Brownie (junior Girl Scout) is not
unbelievable IMHO. One can picture the Brownie (a little girl of age 7 or
so, I think) helping Mom with the garden or the sewing and getting a point
toward a merit badge or something like that. Then if Dad helps Mom, he gets
a (jocular) point too. And if he does something to accommodate his boss, he
gets a similar (sarcastic) point in the eyes of his (jealous?) co-workers.
A reasonable speculation, but so far not substantiated, apparently ...
please correct me if substantiation is available.

Here is an alternative speculation for consideration. It is inferior to the
above speculation in that the candidate etymon is not exactly "brownie
point"; it is superior to the above and to the railroad and magazine
stories presented by Michael Quinion in that the candidate etymon is known
to have existed and to have been familiar to the general public.

During WW II, in 1943 and 1944, there was a system of rationing of food,
gasoline, tires, shoes, etc., in the US. In order to buy a rationed item
one would have to pay its price AND fork over a specified number of ration
"points" in the form of stamps or tokens (which were issued to the citizen
or household by the government). For meats and fats there were red and
brown points, for some other foods green and blue. A pound of sirloin steak
might cost (say) 40 cents, a pound of hamburger 25 cents, a pound of
chicken 50 cents [expensive!] ... but to buy the pound of sirloin one might
need to submit 12 brown points, while the hamburger might require 6 brown
points per pound but the chicken required no points. So theoretically no
matter how affluent you were, if you had no brown points you couldn't have
any beef (although you could eat a lot of chicken). [Of course there were
all kinds of complications and one could of course circumvent the system.]
There was also a scheme to encourage conservation of grease (which was used
for various purposes): one could take a pound of accumulated kitchen grease
to the meat market and sell it for 4 cents plus 2 brown points, apparently.
There are hundreds of instances of "brown point" in this sense at N'archive
from 1943-4. Generally the food ration points could not be stored up: they
expired after a certain interval (often 1 month, I think).

In 1944 (I think), the food rationing system was dropped and all talk of
ration points abruptly ceased. But it is not impossible that "brown point"
was slightly modified to "brownie point", perhaps reinterpreted as related
to Girl Scouts or otherwise. One can imagine various types of jokes or
sayings which might have provided a bridge: e.g., "Doesn't matter if you're
rich or poor ... no brown points, no meat tonight." Note that it would have
been the men who typically might have made such remarks, while it was
mostly the women who would have dealt with the brown stamps (no stamps were
required in the military AFAIK).

Only a speculation: maybe not even the best one.

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_Times Recorder_ (Troy NY), 16 Dec. 1943: p. 24:

<<Don't get caught short with no brown points before the end of the week.>>

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_Gettysburg [PA] Times_, 25 Feb. 1944: p. 3:

<<"But say," Chick Klein exclaimed, "the way I feel now -- well, I'm not as
young as I used to be, but I hope the brown points hold out. I'm going to
be needing a lot of steaks when we start training at Wilmington.">>

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-- Doug Wilson