The "Talking My Language!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Told my wife that I was going to go out and "redd up" the garage.  She knew exactly what I meant, since we have both heard that expression all of our lives.  Both her parents and my  parents used it when our bedrooms became messy and Carol and I did the same thing with our children when their rooms needed to be...well...redd up!  Not long ago I mentioned to a friend that I was going to spend some time redding up the workshop and he looked at me with a questioning look on his face.  "You know...put all the tools back where they belong."  I could tell he had never heard that word before.  And, evidently, he's not the only one who had never heard it in the past.  I find that hard to believe since it was part of my vocabulary since as far back as I can remember.  And, that's a long time!  I have lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania my entire life and neighbors in the half-dozen neighborhoods where I grew up or lived after getting married always used "redd up."  Some might have pronounced it "ret up" or even "red up," but it still all meant the same thing.  So, what does it mean you may wonder if you have never heard it before.  Well, it means to "clean up" or "clear up."  The terms "redd" and "redd up" came to the America midlands from the many Scottish immigrants who settled here.  It's meaning is "to clear an area or to make it tidy."  Redd is still used in Scotland and Northern Ireland and is especially common in Pennsylvania.  For Christmas in 2019 I received a gift to do family research on Ancestry.com.  I attempted to do so, but all that I found was that my heritage was Scotch-Irish.  Ah, Ha!  So, that's why I know what "Redd up" meant and why my parents used that term when they wanted me to clean up my room.  I did a bit more research and found that "redd up" was a verb that listed 138 other verbs that had the same meaning with a few being: neaten, groom, spruce up, smarten up, make neat, sort out, adjust, organize, make tidy, correct, untangle, unsnarl, unkink, revamp, posh up, overhaul, etc., etc. and the list goes on and on.  The word also has roots in a Middle English verb "redden" which meant to rescue or free from, or to clear.  I then found that the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has an annual campaign against litter that is called "Let's Redd Up Pittsburgh" day.  As I continued to search, I found that the residents of the Shetland Islands, off northern Scotland, call their annual cleanup "Da Roar Redd Up" or "The Spring Clean Up."  So, if I ever meet you in the future and tell you I have to go home and redd up my cellar or garage, you'll know exactly what I mean.  I hope!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.