Gin Up!

What was said? “Ok team – let’s gin up!”

Did someone really say that? Yes, at an alumni board meeting when our team was about to present our proposal / plan.

What does it mean?  In the context above, it means to get the team excited / stimulated and stir up some feedback on what we were about to present.

However, there are some uses where it is meant to be more focused on generating interest / discussion through dishonest ways – which was not the intention above! (has nothing to do with the alcohol gin, despite the image I chose for this post!)

Origin: Gin up refers back to the good old cotton gin where the removal of seeds from the fluffy white cotton was known as the ginning of cotton. The gin was an incredible invention and was known to work very hard so to “work things up” or “make things work” the term gin up (and more specifically “gin her up”) became part of colloquial slang in the US back in the late 1880s.

Another theory is that gin up comes from a phrase “ginger up” referring to prepping a horse for an auction and putting ginger on their delicate parts to make them appear lively.

Sources

• https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/now-thats-a-loaded-expression/article690391/#:~:text=The%20Oxford%20English%20Dictionary%20finds,from%20the%20fluffy%20white%20stuff.
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gin_up#:~:text=To%20exaggerate.,%2C%20stimulate%2C%20enliven%2C%20incite.