Talk:ruckus

• "Is the following true? The etymology of this word is erroneously listed as a combination of ruction and rumpus in Webster. The origin of this word is Arabic. Ruckus in Arabic means "dance". Arabic dance involves a lot of commotion and jumping. The word came to the English language in 1825 when England was gearing up to occupy Egypt."

I remove the above, utterly unsourced theory in favor of the one the refernce works seem to concur on, also for the following reasons:

1. ck makes no sense as transliteration of Arabic,
2. 1825 was smack in the reign of Mehmet Ali, who made Egypt from a Turkish province into a nominally tributary, de facto independent, even rival state, the British occupation would only follow in 1882
3. oriental dances (largely intermingled in the Ottoman days) are rather melodious, not markedly wild or jumpy, certainly not worse then many in the actual British Empire Fastifex 10:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

• What is more than one ruckus? Ruckuses or rucki?

Ruckuses. Ruckus is not a latinate word, to pluralise it as such would show the speaker to be an individual of great ignorance. 194.80.32.12 03:20, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

A google-check confirms ruckuses is the only plural in use. However the ignorance is inevitable, as the origin of 'rumpus' is unknown (perhaps even spurious late Latin) and its being the source of the -us in ruckus depends on an only 'probable' etymology