Search us!

Search The Word Detective and our family of websites:

This is the easiest way to find a column on a particular word or phrase.

To search for a specific phrase, put it between quotation marks.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments are OPEN.

We deeply appreciate the erudition and energy of our commenters. Your comments frequently make an invaluable contribution to the story of words and phrases in everyday usage over many years.

Please note that comments are moderated, and will sometimes take a few days to appear.

 

 

shameless pleading

 

 

 

 

Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free

Is it safe?

Dear Word Detective: Don’t know if I’m spelling this correctly, but I’d like to know the origin of the “Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free” shouted by children playing the ancient game of tag. — Carol.

Ah yes, the ancient game of tag. Isn’t there an iPhone app for that now? Apparently there’s now one for solving Sudoku puzzles. You’ll notice that I didn’t say for “playing” Sudoku. No, with this “app,” you just point your phone’s camera at the puzzle and it uses artificial intelligence to solve it for you. Whee! Incidentally, the American Dialect Society (ADS), the linguists and scholars who study and document American English as it is actually spoken, voted at their annual meeting this month to declare “app” (short for “application,” a software program that runs on a computer, telephone, etc.) as the ADS Word of the Year for 2010. Runners-up included “nom” (“Onomatopoetic form connoting eating, especially pleasurably”), “junk” in a number of senses, “Wikileaks,” and “trend” as a verb. “Refudiate” won the “Most Unnecessary” category hands down.

I was never a big fan of playing “Tag” because I was a small, weedy child and consequently spent a disproportionate amount of time being “It.” “Hide and Seek,” where children hide from the child designated “It,” at least gave me the opportunity to get some reading done behind the couch. It’s when “It” finds one of the hiders, of course, that the found child becomes “It” and the game restarts. “Ollie ollie oxen free” is traditionally shouted at this point by the old “It” to let the other players know that they should emerge from their hiding places and start the game over. So the “Ollie” shout is really from Hide and Seek, not Tag.

“Ollie ollie oxen free” is part of what Iona and Peter Opie, in their wonderful book “The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren” (Oxford University Press, 1959), called “the code of oral legislation” among children. The Opies studied and interviewed children in England, Scotland and Ireland just after World War II, meticulously documenting the customs and vocabulary of their rituals, games, and traditions. What they found was a rich culture that in some cases dated back to the Middle Ages and originated in adult customs at that time. For instance, a child in 20th century England would say “barley” to gain temporary respite from a schoolyard fight, a term that comes from the custom of Medieval knights offering their opponent the opportunity to “parley” or “parlez” (French for “talk”), i.e., ask for mercy. Thus childhood, at the time the Opies studied it, had become a linguistic museum of British history. Today, as we say today, probably not so much.

In the case of “Ollie ollie oxen free” and its many variants, we have a mutated form of the original “all clear” signal. This was probably something like “All’s out come in free” or “All ye out come in free,” meaning that anyone still hiding (“out”) can now come back into the group without fear (“free”) of being tagged “It.” Since the game “Hide and Seek” itself is at least four centuries old, there’s been plenty of time for that original phrase to be filtered through small ears clogged with dirt and come out almost unrecognizable.

The “Ollie” of “Ollie ollie oxen free” is almost certainly the “All ye” reshaped to take the form of “Ollie,” short for the proper name “Oliver.” The “oxen” is classic folk etymology, where a word or words that sound unfamiliar to the listener (“come in,” in this case), especially when slurred, are given the form of a more familiar word (“oxen”). Of course, many British customs have jumped the pond to the US and Canada, and “Ollie ollie oxen free” is well known in America, often with regional variations. In areas of the Midwest settled by immigrants from Norway, for instance, one popular form is “Ole Ole Olsen’s free.”

Sadly, I should probably say “was,” because that form was documented by the Dictionary of American Regional English back in the 1960s. You don’t have to be a geezer to see that the loss of the native culture of childhood to cable TV, videogames and their ilk represents the severing of a irreplaceable link between everyday life today and life centuries ago. The anarchic play of unsupervised kids was, in a real sense, steeped in the culture, from chivalry to superstition, of their great-great-great-and-beyond-grandparents. Kids grew up, but the ancient river of childhood flowed on to greet each new generation. But I’m sure that soon we’ll have an app to replace that. Nom nom.

68 comments to Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free

  • Larry Israel

    When I was a kid back in the 1940’s (New York City) we said “Home Free All”. I never heard of “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” until my kids were playing (Allentown, Pa.) thirty years later.

  • gordon

    I heard it originated as “calling all the outs in free” and eventually morphed into “ollie ollie oxen free”

    • Charlie

      I think, Gordon, you shared almost exactly what I heard. As a child I was told by my Mother that “all outs are in free” was the last word of my 5-year-old uncle dying about 1905 in Oklahoma. He was delirious and apparently remembering a game of tag. I have concluded “ollie ollie oxen free” is how the term evolved over time with children slurring the call to come in, which was, “all outs are in free”, as someone else was tagged “it” and a new game was to begin.

  • CAROLE MUSGRAVE

    I HEARD IT COME FROM OLDEN TIMES WHEN IT WAS, ALL IN ALL IN URCHINS FREE. URCHINS BEING KIDS

  • I’m 52 and a half years old, and ollie, ollie, oxen free is what I said as a child.

  • Ron Grimes

    Well, here’s my twist on this saying. This year, I decided to learn German, and I’m currently at level 4 of the German Rosetta Stone course. As you may know, English is a Germanic language, and so many of our words sound very close. I was thinking the other day about the origin of Ollie Ollie oxen free, and I noticed how this could easily have been the poor attempts of English speaking children to imitate their German speaking friends shouting, “Alle alle auch sind frei.”, which means All, All are free.

  • Ron Grimes

    Btw, punch that German phrase into Google translate and then click the speak icon in the lower right of the translation box, and see if you can hear the similarity. See http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT#auto/en/alle%20alle%20auch%20sind%20frei

  • Ron

    Of course, another German phrase that’s possible is changing auch to such, as in “Alle alle euch sind frei”, which would render “All, you all are free.” Euch is you and auch is also.

    • Dennis

      This makes most sense and sounds very similar. ‘euch’ in german is pronounced ‘oik ‘ and ‘sind’ is ‘zind ‘ so combined they sound like ‘oikzin’ which sounds to me really close to ‘oxen’ with a boston accent.

  • MarkB

    I seem to recall ‘ollie ollie entry,’ while my father told me he used ‘oxen free.’ I’m surprised to see no mention of ‘new cucumber’ here. Typically, a boy would should ‘ollie ollie entry/oxen free, new cucumber!’ This was notice that a new person was joining the game. This was in Boston during the 1960s. It’s been suggested that ‘new cucumber’ was a play on ‘new comer,’ as in new person joining the game.

    I have to add that when I was using these words, it never occurred to me that they could be spelled out. Since they were only used orally, there was no reason for them to be tied down to a particular literary form. I think that at the time I would have transliterated ‘ally-ally,’ as in ‘all of you.’ The ‘ollie’ spelling I see now certainly makes less sense than my original assumption.

    It is sad to see that this sort of thing seems to be disappearing. Generations of children passed these cultural tidbits down to each other, without schooling or parents being involved. Now? I doubt hide and seek has been played in my old Boston neighborhood in decades.

    • lorla bene

      this 76 yr grandma definitely remembers olly olly ocean free new cucumber…..don’t know why we used “ocean” instead of “oxen”, but we had fun…. I’m also surprised not too much mention of “new cucumber”….

  • Joe

    Never heard of cucumber, but we called out “Ally, ally in come free”. I guess it was pretty clean cut in St. Louis in the 70’s.

  • Karen

    I grew up in the 1950’s and we would play hide and seek and use the term “ollie, ollie, oxen free”. I grew up on the west coast

  • Jonathan

    Does anybody know of the version, “Ollie, Ollie home come free!”. That’s what I used when I was little in the New York/Connecticut area. I am using it in a show (I am a comedian/singer/songwriter) and I’d like to use 1. a version that people in New York/Connecticut would recognize, and 2. another version that people in Scotland would recognize.

    Thanks so much!

  • Jaime

    I was born in 1985 and grew up (mostly) in Sharon, PA (on the OH) border. My friends and I always said Olly Olly oxen free. In never even occurred to that there may other variations until I decided to look the phrase up. I also lived in FL and IN growing up, and I can’t remember if my friends used the phrase in either of those places. I know it was common in PA, though.

  • Diana P

    I always thought it was from “All ye! All ye! All’s in free” and when I was a kid we pronounced it “Allie! Allie! Aoughts in free”. I was in California but my parents were from Kansas.

  • We played Hide & Seek games until dark in Southern CA. We called “Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free”. This was late 40s/early 50s. I’m now teaching the phrase to my grandchildren who don’t seem to mind that grandma is kind of slow getting to base (they always win!). But they love yelling out this phrase.

  • I’m seventy one and as children we said “Ollie Ollie oxen free!” I don’t know what made me think of it today but that is what made me look it up. I found it interesting, the many variations of it from around the world. The German rendition made a lot of sense. It’s funny how a lot of things came from the old country. I think we’re all hiding from something, wishing someone would free us up from those burdens we somethimes harbor. There’s always a reason when things come to mind. How blessed we are to have the internet, to free us from so many unanswered questions.So I wish you all, “Ollie Ollie oxen free.” God Bless.

  • Larry Bailey

    I’am 51 and grew up in upstate NY. We would always yell Ollie Ollie Homefree when you managed to get back to home base without being tagged, while the seeker was out looking for other hiders. Our games never ended until either everybody made it to homebase or where tagged out trying to get to homebase. Why would you give a free pass and stop the game before it was over??? Weird!

  • Pat

    I spent my elementary school years in suburban St. Louis during the ’50s. We used the “in come free” version (see “Joe” above).

  • Kris

    Back in the 1950’s, we used Ollie, Ollie, Oxen. Oxen Free. Who don’t come, it will be.

  • Susan

    I’m 60 and grew up downstate Illinois. We said “ally, ally oxen free-o”. Don’t know why the free-o unless one of us was trying to say free-er and had a speech impediment! We grew up on a farm and there were 7 of us kids, so lots of room and places to play hide and seek.

  • Bettina Gray

    When I was the youngest of many cousins and was always’it’ in ‘Hide and Seek’ the call in the dark “ally,ally, outs in free” was wonderful!

  • My dog Is a boxer and we named him Ollie and his nick name is “Ollie Ollie oxen free”

  • Larry

    I grew up on the west coast during the 1950’s and we used to say ollie, ollie all in free, free, free. I guess it didn’t matter what you said or how you said it, we all meant the same thing.

  • Melissa

    I grew up in Australia in the 1970’s and we said this phrase also.
    My daughter who is 10 was saying it yesterday and the reason as to why I am on here reading it’s origin.
    I have really enjoyed reading all these comments, it makes me a little nostalgic.
    I wish the internet hadn’t replaced a lot of the great childhood games with apps.
    I am now going to try and teach my daughter the great outdoor games we played until dark in the beautiful Australian summers.

  • Kitty

    I’m 55 and the reason I’m even at this site was because I was researching Olly Olly Oxen Free as a title for a poem I’m writing.It seems many of us have similar but different memories but we all seem to have a fond remembrance of days gone by.

    Blessings! From a child at heart…

  • I am 51 and grew up in Arkansas and Texas and we used the phrase “Ollie Ollie oxen free”

  • Marilee

    I grew up in the sixties in California and we said Ollie Ollie oxen free at ten end of a game of hide and seek. There were sixty three children in the twenty houses on the block I lived on, so we always had a lot of kids to play with. I was looking up the phrase because I was going to use it in a post to my granddaughter whose little son is due today and is taking his time making his appearance. I don’t think it is necessarily sad that the children won’t live our lives, we didn’t sit around wishing we were living our parents’ or grandparents’ lives and they won’t bemoan the fact that they aren’t living ours. They will be just as nostalgist for their experiences twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty years from now as we are about ours.

  • Jan

    Just realized after 55 years that i had been saying this all wrong as a kid. I thought it was “Ollie Ollie infantry.” haha

  • Phill

    Jane Fonda says something similar to this in the movie Klute. When she meets Klute (Donald Sutherland) for the second time, she suddenly breaks off from talking to him, opens a door and shouts it out, finishing with the phrase – “I’ve got the gum drops!” Can anyone shed any light on this?

  • chorley

    My brother and I were reminiscing about growing up the other day, and we both had no idea why we said “ollie ollie oxen free.” We lived in midwest America as children but our dad was a European immigrant and our mom’s from the east coast, and I know we picked up some unusual traditions and such. Honestly, I think we played tag wrong 90% of the time. We were always making up new rules and twists to make the game more interesting.

  • sn

    Growing up in New Jersey, Connecticut, and California I got to hear a lot of regional variations of expressions. I think originally in hide and seek it was “ollie ollie in come free”, but then later when I first heard “oxen free” I thought what is this oxen all about. Even in my puzzlement though it sounded familiar so I must have heard it before somewhere. I think some places I even heard “everybody in come free”

  • Shannon

    Peanuts cartoon strip October 3rd, 1955 documents Lucy yelling “olee olee olsen free-o” and Violet responding back: “in case you don’t know it, the phrase is ‘ally ally out are in free!”

  • Marty

    My husband from Indiana says he used to say ” All the all the outs in free” which makes sense but being from CA we all said ” Ollie Ollie oxen free” which granted makes no sense but is so traditional!

  • Kristine

    A group of neighborhood kids born in the late forties and early fifties (I am 63) in westbrook maine said all-ee all-ee en come free during hide-and-seek – a popular after supper game in summer.

  • andrew

    Fascinating stuff! I was born in the UK in 1944 and moved to South Africa at age 5 and have NEVER heard the expression! But I loved the history – thanks!

  • Kit

    I tip my hat to all of us! Here we are- each having searched the internet to expand our literal understanding of a phrase that sums up one of the best parts of childhood. Siliness and joy beyond measure. I’ve enjoyed each comment, thanks for sharing! Saying or thinking the phrase has each of us out in the yard with our childhood companions and flooded with the joy we experienced decades ago.

    I’m 54 and I train dogs as well as helping (training)!dog parents to remediate issues that often spring up from the dog being anxious or fearful. I use and encourage the use of silly phrases for bridging the communication gap between peeps and pets. The dog hears what you mean- ‘I’m relaxed, happy, and full of joy- come join me!’ It doesn’t really matter what is said. Who could possibly say ‘Ollie, Ollie, oxen free!’ with a tense voice and tense facial expression? Impossible!

    I found myself reading all of this because I was composing an email to a new client, describing the use of Ollie, Ollie … as a new recall or reassurance phrase and thought to myself, ‘hmmm… I love it, I use it, it’s universal- what does it mean?

    Thank you very much for sharing the numerous versions, the games, the joy! My thanks to the author(s) of this website! You have all added a deeply satisfying scoop of joy to a gray and blizzard-y Wisconsin day!

    Ollie Ollie oxen free!

    Kit

  • in milwaukee in the 60’s, we shouted ‘olly olly in come free’ after a game of kick-the-can. The miracles of modern times electronic gizmos is killing off centuries of traditions. Do they still have recess in schools anywhere? My kid, in elementary school had no recess and brought home hours of homework-there wasnt time to play outside.

  • Nancy

    In Chicago in the mid 20th century we said ‘Olly olly ocean free’ usually followed by ‘new player’. We didn’t use this in tag, only in hide and seek, and the phrase was used when a newcomer wanted to joing the game, so that we could start over.

  • Teacher Mom

    I grew up in the 1970’s in a great suburban neighborhood in Lexington, Ky. Our rule was to come home when the street lights came on. We always said “Olly, olly in come free” to let everyone know it was safe to come back to home base. I am glad to say that my boys (teenagers now) also had the chance to grow up in a neighborhood where they could ride bikes, play pick up football in a neighbor’s yard, climb trees, go sledding on snow days and play cops and robbers when it finally got dark on a summer night. I am sure that they have no idea how unique that is in this day and age. All the neighbors watch out for each other and our kids have slowly (sometimes it seems lightning quick) evolved from only being allowed to run up and down our side of the street to now being allowed to bike all around the neighborhood to the park and friends’ houses. It starts by teaching them responsibility and common sense when they are little. Teach them to be smart and cautious, but not afraid of everything.

  • When I was younger and we played hide and seek, anybody we didn’t find had to be called in by saying allee allee oxen free.

  • Konni

    Over the years I heard people saying ollie, ollie oxen free, but thought “no, we didn’t say it that way”. Looking it up on the internet I saw the midwest version. I grew up in the ’50’s in Grand Forks, ND, and ole, ole olsen’s free is what we said! My brother passed away last year and when I “talk” to him on his facebook page I always sign off now with Ole, Ole, Olsen’s Free!Then add, It’s time to go home for supper!

  • deirdra

    I came here because I was watching a 1962 episode of the Twilight Zone called “Kick the Can” and they were saying “ollie ollie oxen free” and I said what do oxen have to do with hide and seek? When I was playing kick the can in the 1950s and 60s we said “all-y all-y in come free” in Rochester NY.

  • Edie Babe

    I was looking it up because when I go for walks with my girl friend at night she always says text me when you get home and I always want to text her ‘Ollie Ollie oxen free – home safe’ so I wanted to know what it actually meant &/or before I sent it to that because she’s funny like that and she would ask. I live in the Pacific Northwest in Canada currently and grew up on the Canadian pra

  • Mel

    I grew up saying and hearing: All ye, all ye osten free!
    It was during hide and seek and never with tag. I grew up in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in the 60’s. I know that ‘osten’ is ‘east’ in German. I’m sure it was not ‘oxen’.

    I know that Kitchener at that time had a large German population. It was once called Berlin but the name was changed due to one of the World Wars. However, none of my friends were of German descent.

    We also shouted: ‘Come out! Come out wherever you are.’.

    Has anyone ever heard ‘osten free’? Google searches only give me ‘oxen free’. So sure it wasn’t ‘oxen’.

  • Goobygirl

    What fantastic reading – lovely and genuinely interesting responses, everyone! I ain’t no prude but I must comment that unless any of the following have been edited I find every comment free of: bitterness, whinging, swearing – and hating. Encouraging and refreshing and delightful! It may have been the best time in all our collective childhoods – but it has also just brought out the gentle best in all of us as we contribute. Well.. YAY US! I say. I’m Australian & either lived in/visited every State and Territory here. As the eldest child, I was Child Rearing Lab Rat (1), so amongst other parenting innovations, I began Kindy one year early (aged 3 instead of 4), for only one year before Primary School.Thus I began school a year earlier than usual, aged 4. I experienced the ubiquitous “composite class” (2 different grades+one classroom+one tcher). So by my final year of high school, across a total 13 yr period I had attended a total of 13 establishments – but I did not EVER, even once, see or hear a game using “Olly Olly Oxenfree”… However I DID hear it on an episode of the 1960’s/US children’s episodic Sci-Fi TV show LOST IN SPACE, with always very scary music by constant Speilberg collaborator, John Williamson, on weekday afternoons right before “The Monkees” in that 4PM-6PM period. At this point I was in Grade 3 so this was 1966/7. The “Robot” is searching for “Will,” or a sulky “Dr. Smith”, or a “Penny” and it repeatedly calls out “Ollie, Ollie Oxenfree”! It’s use in the show seemed to imply it was a ploy to garner a response from a missing/lost person.
    Sincere appreciation extended to everyone else who commented here.

  • Teresa jones

    I so loved reading this. I remember the phrase, but never really knew the real words(sort of like singing a song and just filling in sounds that resembled the words) I have no idea why I looked this up today, but so glad I did because it took me back to a very good place and time in my life. So nice to share these precious memories with everyone! Thank you!!

  • Paul H

    I just heard kids dusing a song to dance with this line in it- in a hiphop song. I had only ever heard it once before. Dyan Cannon said it in the 1974 movie “The Last of Sheila” (a great mystery by the way). I never knew what it meant. Glad I found this bit of info.
    And I miss those innocent days where we made u games and played outside til dark.

  • jetMouse

    Grew up in the 50s & 60s in California. We all used ollie, ollie oxen free and “come out come out where ever you are” What great times. We did get to play (without supervision) till it was getting dark. Makes me want to run and hide.

  • jim

    I’m 60, grew up in the midwest, and always shouted Ollie Ollie outs in free.

  • It’s definitely regional. I was born in 1943. We lived in North Hollywood, Calif. When I was 9 in 1952, we moved WAY out into farm country… to Reseda, Calif. Boy… that changed fast. As far back as I can remember we used to say “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free”, or however you wanted to spell it.

  • I agree with the writer who spoke of the courtesy expressed by each person, and seemed to speak from nostalgia re “Ollie Ollie Oxenfree”, or “Olly Olly………”. I don’t remember using the phrase in any childhood games, yet it is a familiar phrase. My reason for researching it is two-fold. One, to learn it’s true meaning and origin. (Ron Grimes’ German words seemed to make more sense to me. Ally ally auch sind frei.) Number two reason is darker. Just before or just after a jahadist commits and act of terror, the words he shouts, Allahu Akbar, somehow remind me of the innocent shouting of Ally Ally Oxenfree in childhood games.Just wondered if I was the only one who was thinking of the similarity, but knowing the distinct difference between the two.

    I thoroughly enjoyed each comment.

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Please support
The Word Detective


unclesamsmaller
by Subscribing.

 

Follow us on Twitter!

 

 

 

Makes a great gift! Click cover for more.

400+ pages of science questions answered and explained for kids -- and adults!

FROM ALTOIDS TO ZIMA, by Evan Morris