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

[Jonathan Lighter]

"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"
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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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