crinkum-crankum

• crinkum crankum, crincum-crancum, crincum crancum

From crinkle and crankle, or a Low Latin crincum. See 1750 reference and explanation in 1810 citation.

crinkum-crankum (plural crinkum-crankums)

1. Something elaborately convoluted or tricky.
   • 1787, George Colman, Prose on several occasions, T. Cadel, page 95:

     (glossary entry) Crincum-crancum,—Lines of irregularity and involution.

   • 1802 February, Peter Thrifty, “A Farmer's Description of the Illuminations in London”, in Sporting Magazine, volume 19, page 286:

     I had no notion of being lost in so much light; but I had wander'd out of the main streets, and was got to the crinkum-crankum parts of London, where there are turnings and windings on every side.

   • 1810 November, review of Sir John Sinclair, Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee (1810, London), The Quarterly Review, volume IV, number viii, page 535:

     ‘... yet if she will come into the court riding backward upon a black ram, with his tail in her hand, and say the words following, the steward is bound, by the custom, to re-admit her to her free-bench: —
         Here I am
         Riding upon a black ram,
         Like a ***** as I am;
         Who, for my Crinkum Crankum,
         Have lost my Binkum Bankum;
         *        *        *        *        *        *
         *        *        *        *        *        *
         Therefore, I pray you, Mr. Steward, let me have my land again.’
     [...] That Crinkum Crankum is not less descriptive of tortuosity of opinion as it is of irregularity of conduct.

   • 1842 September, review of J. H. Markland, Remarks on English Churches, and on the Expediency of rendering Sepulchral Monuments subservient to Pious and Christian Uses (Second Edition, 1842, Oxford), The Quarterly Review, volume LXX, number cxl, page 437:

     And the artists vainly endeavoured to preserve them by means of vases, pyramids, busts, scrolls, coats-of-arms, projecting cornices, broken pediments, and by what has not inappropriately been called the ‘crinkum-crankum’ style of Elizabeth and James; in which angles and curves are, as before, studiously intermixed, but intermixed without due proportion; and entangle the eye in a labyrinth of fractured lines, without unity, or harmony, or grace.

   • 1849, Herman Melville, Redburn‎:

     “... I tell you men, them's Crinkum-crankum whales.” ¶ “And what is them?” said a sailor. ¶ “Why, them is whales that can't be cotched.”

   • 1893, Foster Barham Zincke, Wherstead: Some Materials for Its History, Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, page 14:

     Forty years ago one who had known it well described it to me as a crincum-crancum kind of house, full of ins and outs.

   • 1995, P. J. O'Rourke, Republican Party Reptile‎:

     Before the Congressional observer team went home, Lugar read a thin-soup statement, crinkum-crankum so packed with "Pash Commit of Flips to Dem" that a Hong Kong TV correspondent was moved to ask, "For those of us who are not native English speakers, could you please tell us what you are saying?"

• Giles Jacob, A New Law Dictionary Containing the Interpretation and Definition of Words and Terms Used in the Law, ..., 1750, Free-Bench
• Jon Bee , Slang: a dictionary of the turf, the ring, the chase, the pit, of bon-ton, ..., London, 1823
• Gordon Williams, A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature, Volume 1, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1994
• “crinkum-crankum”, in Collins English Dictionary.