Once again I need help with a mysterious UK usage, so I turn to the assembled multinational multitude. In Rosamond McKitterick’s LRB review of House of Lilies: The Dynasty that Made Medieval France by Justine Firnhaber-Baker (archived), she writes:
Firnhaber-Baker’s account of the fifteen kings and their many military campaigns is entertaining, unfailingly lively, occasionally a little rackety; it is in essence a collection of royal portraits, focusing more on individual lives than political processes and the wielding of authority.
I am only glancingly aware of the word rackety, and I would have guessed it meant ‘making a racket’; this is indeed the first sense in the OED (entry revised 2008): “Obtrusively noisy or cacophonous; clattering, rattling; boisterous, rowdy” (1796 One of my cows, that was afflicted sorely with, as he called it, a racketty complaint in her bowels. S. J. Pratt, Gleanings Wales, Holland & Westphalia (ed. 2) xiv. 228), but there is a second sense “Characterized by or inclined to dissipation; disreputable” (1884 Their boys are all jolly, nice young fellows. All have turned out so well, not one of them rackety, you know. American Naturalist vol. 18 109) — Green has it as “of objects, insalubrious; of individuals, characterized as immoral” (1929 [UK] J.B. Booth London Town 106: Rackety young fellow-about-town). Does anybody have a sense of what McKitterick means by it here?
Incidentally, the review gives a good example of what happens when documentation is misplaced:
Hugh’s success owed much to the support of Adalbero, the archbishop of Rheims, and his protégé, Gerbert. The earliest narrative account of these events, and of the rivalries and conflicts that preceded them, was written by Richer, a monk from the abbey of Saint-Remi, just outside Rheims. Richer was taught by Gerbert, to whom he dedicated his Histories. His text emphasises that this was a process of election rather than usurpation, and stresses the importance of a strong and competent king who could bring peace to the realm. Those who supported Hugh no doubt hoped for political advantage; they may also have decided that he would be the more effective ruler. The legitimacy of his rule was challenged, not least in its first years, when a rebellion by the rejected Charles of Lorraine nearly succeeded in toppling him. But this needs to be set against the absence of contemporary complaints over the demise of the Carolingians, the widespread pragmatic support for the newly established dynasty and the Capetians’ unerring ability to produce sons to secure the succession.
Richer’s account of the beginnings of Capetian kingship had little immediate impact. Gerbert seems to have taken the only copy of the Histories with him when he relinquished his claim to the see of Rheims and moved to the court of the Saxon ruler Otto III in 997. It is assumed that the Histories were left behind in Germany and absorbed into the Ottonian rulers’ library when Gerbert left for Rome to become Pope Silvester II. Then the manuscript in effect disappeared for seven hundred years. It was rediscovered in 1833, and published six years later by Georg Pertz in the collection of primary sources known as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. In part because Richer’s record of Hugh’s election was unknown in France, other versions of the Capetian takeover were invented by chroniclers. The fate of Richer’s account, which described a legitimate election rather than the usurpation portrayed in so many subsequent chronicles, serves as a salutary reminder of the role played by historians, both medieval and modern, in the construction of the Capetian kings’ role in the formation of France.
I’d understand it as “disreputable, probably in somewhat déclassé way” (presumably she means the kings, rather than Firnhaber-Baker.)
Ah, if she’s talking about the kings, which I guess is plausible in these syntactically lax days, then yes, your interpretation makes sense.
But isn’t the word ‘rackety’ describing the author’s account of the kings and their doings, not the character of the kings themselves? I’d go with the ‘rowdy, boisterous’ interpretation, meaning that the story is overdone, melodramatic, in the manner of a Punch and Judy show.
That makes sense too!
I’d go with the ‘rowdy, boisterous’ interpretation, meaning that the story is overdone, melodramatic, in the manner of a Punch and Judy show.
That’s what I would have guessed, if Americans are allowed to guess. She’s unfailingly lively but occasionally she takes liveliness too far.
The “disreputable” sense seems like some sort of premonition of the pejoratives “racketeer” and “racketeering,” both of which are said to have been coined in the U.S. in the 1920’s.
Is the Minister aware that we are talking about a company that, as its sole activity, is proposing to build an interconnector with France, that has… never traded and is completely reliant for its existence on loans from unnamed overseas companies. But it has been active as a company in one other area: giving huge donations to the Conservative party….Now, perhaps in return, it wants the Government to support its rackety scheme….
Hansard, 06/07/2021.
Indeed, just a few days ago, he sent a message to the school, which is pretty remarkable….Why did Prince Philip take such an interest? As others have said, his life was rackety before he went to Gordonstoun. His family got him out of Germany, probably for his own safety, because, I am told, he laughed at Nazis when they gave the Nazi salute. Gordonstoun gave him stability, order and structure…
Hansard, 12/04/21
I am getting a sense of “irregular, disordered, chaotic”. If this is not in the dictionaries, could it be a newer sense?
I am getting a sense of “irregular, disordered, chaotic”.
That was my first thought, but then I decided I was confusing it with ‘rickety.’
Which word best applies to the life of Prince Philip I am not in a position to say.
OK, I have written to Prof. McKitterick; I’ll pass on any information she provides.
I have heard back, and this is what she said: “I am sure you picked up that ‘rackety’ was meant pejoratively though I did not wish to be too critical. (Complete) OED’s first and second definitions include the elements of a ‘racket’; characterised by noise, and excitement’.” Not as specific as one might have wished, but there it is.
So she intended the familiar-to-Americans sense, and did after all mean Firnhaber-Baker. I am disappointed. I liked the sound of those illusory rackety (UK) kings. More kings should be rackety.
the Capetians’ unerring ability to produce sons to secure the succession.
“Unerring ability” means what, specifically ? All that is needed to produce children is to point the pole at the hole and lunge. What happens after that has nothing to do with ability or error avoidance. What kinds of error might those have been, anyway?
Arrant teleology, I calls it.
To be contrasted with: Unarrant ability ! Meek contingence !
It all makes sense now.
All that is needed to produce children is to point the pole at the hole and lunge.
But to be sure of producing sons, there are many other factors to be taken into account. The time of day and month; alignment relative to the fixed stars; the phases of the major planets; the relative position of the participants; the angle and depth of entry; the ‘dwell time,’ to use an engineering term. And more, no doubt, per the instructions of the keenly observant court astrologer.
Alternatively, one can just go about it willy-nilly (hah) and farm out unwanted girl babies to the local peasantry.
Said the nilly to the willy,
“Come on in, the weather’s fine!
After a few practice runs
I guarantee you only sons.”
You can have an only son, but can you have only sons? At least if there’s more than only one, there’s a spare.
point the pole at the hole and lunge
Or, as Mr. Cummings wrote-
“ the way to hump a cow is not
to elevate your tool
but drop a penny in the slot
and bellow like a bool”
At several websites I find the following, and equivalents:
“Unfortunately this poem has been removed from our archives at the insistence of the copyright holder.”
More like “half-baked”.
“Pole in the hole” aside, the rise of Moscow (compared to other North-Eastern Russian principalities) is sometimes attributed (inter alia) to the fact that for several crucial generations the princes of Moscow produced a single son (maybe discounting those dying early, I didn’t check), which insured a smooth succession.
When I read this sentence, I understood it to mean something like “bodged-together, somewhat ramshackle in construction, in danger of falling apart” in the sense that the book was a collection of rollicking but slightly random anecdotes: entertaining enough but failing to cohere into a rigorous scholarly assessment of the subject at hand.
That does sound more like “rickety,” but I still think it’s probably more or less what the author meant, perhaps with a bit of the “raucous” meaning thrown in.
A Google search for “rackety old house” and “rackety old shed” turns up quite a few hits of the word being used in more or less this sense.