Eeny, meeny, miny, moe MGM's "Ars Gratia Artis". The rhyme appears towards the end of 1949 British black comedy, "Kind Hearts and Coronets". The use of the word "nigger" was censored for the American market, being replaced by "sailor". Eeny, meeny, miny, moe "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" — which can be spelled a number of ways — is a children's counting rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag, or for selecting various other things. It is one of a large group of similar rhymes in which the child who is pointed to by the chanter on the last syllable is
Latin influence in English tribes, who would later give rise to the English language (the Angles, Saxon and Jutes) traded and fought with the Latin speaking Roman Empire. Many words (some originally from Greek) for common objects therefore entered the vocabulary of these Germanic people via Latin even before the tribes reached Britain (what is known as the Continental or Zero Period): "anchor", "butter", "camp", "cheese", "chest", "cook", "copper", "devil", "dish", "fork", "gem", "inch", "kitchen", "mile", "mill", "mint" (coin), "noon", "pillow", "pound" (unit of weight), "punt" (boat), "sack", "street", "wall", "wine". Cognates of virtually all of these English words exist in the other Germanic