'olly olly oxen free' in Congress

[Benjamin Barrett]

In the video on the page you cited, he specifically calls it "hide-n-seek." I can't imagine parsing this to mean that the game was called olly ollen oxen free.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

On Jun 14, 2013, at 6:08 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>
>
> I read that quote, and I didn't think it was clear that the congressman
> knew the name of the game.  The writer did.  What caught my attention was
> "a phrase in the game called..."  Taking "called" to modify "phrase"
> requires a stretch of a parse.
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 11:30 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 13, 2013, at 8:09 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>> On Jun 13, 2013, at 9:50 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>>>
>>>> A Huff Post story at
>>>>
>>>>
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/indefinite-detention-americans_n_3437923.html?ref=topbar
>>>>
>>>> quotes a congressman as follows:
>>>>
>>>> "There was a phrase in that game called 'olly olly oxen free' -- meant
>> you
>>>> could come out, you were safe, you no longer had to hide," Cotton
>> argued.
>>>>
>>>> I've never heard "hide 'n' seek" called that, but the phrase is now in
>> the
>>>> Congressional Record.
>>>>
>>> Maybe he was blending two observations--
>>>
>>> (1) There was a phrase in a game, which went "olly olly oxen free" and
>> that meant you could come out [etc.]
>>> (2) The game in question was hide 'n' seek.
>>>
>>> Close enough for government work.
>>
>> It's a parsing issue. Here's the quote from the article:
>>
>> -----
>> Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), compared ending indefinite detention to giving
>> someone a free pass in a game of hide-and-seek.
>>
>> "There was a phrase in that game called 'olly olly oxen free' -- meant you
>> could come out, you were safe, you no longer had to hide," Cotton argued.
>> -----
>>
>> -> a phrase called olly olly oxen free
>>
>> This is a little awkward, but is probably common enough in speech.

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