ARGY-BARGY

[Q] From Peter J Lusby, San Diego, California: On a list server to which I am subscribed, the question arose recently, what is the origin of the expression argy-bargy (also written argey-bargey), meaning a relatively amicable, if somewhat heated, argument. Any ideas?

[A] I’m not so sure that the term refers to an amicable argument; in my experience argy-bargies are often not only heated discussions but also rather bad-tempered ones, amounting to a spat or minor quarrel. But then, the term is mainly a British or old Commonwealth one, not that well known in the US, and easily misunderstood out of context.

This rather odd term was a late nineteenth-century modification of a Scots expression, which appeared early in that century as argle-bargle. The first part of this older version was a modification of argue. The second part of both forms of the expression never had independent existences — they are no more than nonsense rhyming repetitions of the first elements.

An early example of the older form appears in The Ayrshire Legatees by John Galt, published in 1821: “Doctor and me may sleep sound on their account, if the nation doesna break, as the argle-barglers in the House of Parliament have been threatening”. A later appearance in the same spelling is likely to be more familiar, as it comes from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped of 1886: “Last night ye haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife” (an apple-wife was a seller of apples from a stall, the female equivalent of a costermonger, and by repute just as argumentative and foul-tongued as her male counterpart). An early example of the modern form, also as a verb, turns up in J M Barrie’s Margaret Ogilvy: “Ten minutes at the least did she stand at the door argy-bargying with that man”.

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