Truce Term - United States

United States

In a study undertaken by historians Mary and Herbert Knapp in the 1970s, informants remembering terms from the 1930s reported kings X and kings. The use of kings X before the 1930s is well-recorded. The 1985 edition of the Dictionary of American Regional English records the historical use of kings ex, kings sax, kings cruse, kings excuse and kings, chiefly west of the Mississippi River, the Gulf States and Ohio Valley. The earliest recorded use cited in the dictionary is of kings cruse in 1778 during an adult fight.

Scholarly speculation in the late nineteenth century postulated that kings X derived from kings truce, rendered as kings cruse and then kings excuse, becoming kings X as a shortened form. The Dictionary of American Regional English cites the Opies as a source for the derivation of the terms and states that exes probably refers to the use of crossed fingers, an important part of the demand for a truce, rather than deriving from "excuse" as originally thought. However, the Knapps state that although the Opies do not record kings X as such in the UK, they do record kings, crosses, exes, cruse and truce. They conclude that kings X derived from the users of kings and exes settling in the same areas of the US—the terms were then combined and shortened. Kings cruse, once popular in the US, might be accounted for in a similar manner. Barley has been recorded as a truce term in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

The Knapps study in Monroe County, Indiana, found time-out and times to be by far the most prevalent terms in the 1970s. Variations included I've got times and time. Very few children reported the more traditional kings, queens or I've got kings X. The authors also reported that these terms were popular over many areas of the US and in American schools abroad. To be functional a truce term must be understood and honoured by most of the children playing together. Time-out clearly derives from the use of intermissions in timed sports and apparently came into the language with the popularization of organized or timed sports and with the advent of such sports in elementary schools and on television. Historically the earliest reports for the use of time-out or time as a truce term were 1935 and 1936. However, only a small number of respondents reported anything other than time-out and its derivatives in use during the 1960s. The few alternatives included pax, safe, base or home-base and freeze with one small area of fins (Mount Vernon). The Knapps reported that time-out had, since the 1950s, supplanted kings ex as the most popular truce term.

The use of times rather than time-out and I've got times rather than I call time appears to have been influenced by older forms such as kings and I've got kings X. There was also one report of times X. Similarly derivatives of time-out are often accompanied by the traditional crossed fingers.