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What Is A Brownie Point?


Pipanella

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Sounds like something that was talked about here.

 

Do The Brownies cache in your area?

Nope. Not even close! (They cache in Washington state and I'm in Ohio.

 

I've seen this at least twice, when I've read logs. Here.....look at the logs for this one, scroll down to January 2nd......the log by bookisme.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&log=y&decrypt=

 

I think I'll just e-mail them and find out what they mean by 'brownie point!' It's not the first time I've seen this either.

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Brownie Point:

 

NOUN: An amount of credit considered as earned, especially by favorably impressing a superior. Often used in the plural. 

 

ETYMOLOGY: From the practice of awarding points for achievement to Brownies in the Girl Scouts.

I found a different definition of brownie points. This excerpt comes from the Historic American Engineering Record (part of the US National Park Service, HAER documents significant engineering sites) Report on the former Southern Pacific Shops in Sacramento, CA.

 

Quoting from the HAER Report:

Both unions and management saw benefits in the "Brown system" of discipline, named after George R. Brown, General Superintendent of the Fall Brook Railway. Instead of levying suspension or dismissal for every infraction, which was hard on both the railway and on employees, a "virtual suspension" was entered into an employee’s record. These "brownie points" could be erased by subsequent months of good conduct. The system, however, didn’t keep employees from being fired on the spot for serious enough offenses. This system also provided the unforeseen advantage of standardizing appropriate procedures for dealing with particular situations, and appropriate penalties for failing to do the correct thing.

 

The report is available on line at: http://www.intemperance.net/carolyn/haer.html or can be obtained (don't know exactly how) from the Library of Congress.

 

This still tells me nothing about what a geocaching brownie point is, probably some good deed related to the cache.

 

spider3

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Brownie Point:

 

NOUN: An amount of credit considered as earned, especially by favorably impressing a superior. Often used in the plural.

 

ETYMOLOGY: From the practice of awarding points for achievement to Brownies in the Girl Scouts.

It's a completely standard expression in the UK. I doubt if more than 5% of Brits wouldn't know what it meant. Maybe a Brit posted it and assumed it was as standard in US English usage as well.

 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to bum a fag, haven't had one in a fortnight. And I'm having faggots for my tea later too.

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Thanks for the history lesson about Brownie Points. :) For the record, I did know what THAT kind of brownie point was, but didn't know the history behind it. Interesting! I know what brown-nosing is, too, and have been known to do it in the past. :P

 

I just saw one in a cache we found over the weekend. It was a business-card-sized laminated card that said something to the effect of, "Your attention to detail has earned you this Brownie Point." I'm guessing the finder liked either the cache or where it was hidden, so rewarded the hider with a Brownie Point.

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"Brownie Point"

Is a term from the era of the Roman Empire. When there were gladiators, slaves, arenas, public baths. The public baths of the elite were made of marble and slaves would bring towels for them to sit on because the marble was cold and slippery. Anyone who left a "brownie point" was because he had not bathed yet.

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