Riffs, raffs and rafts

Rafts of legislation ? Laws and regulations and proposals all seem to come in rafts nowadays. At least, they do in press comments and television reports, so that at first one might assume that this is just one of the latest examples of media jargon.

But the Encarta Dictionary (for example) tells us that the term has been used in this kind of context since the mid-nineteenth century.

Right then; let's guess that the usage is metaphorical, alluding to the enormous 'rafts' of floating logs that the lumberjacks steer down the broad rivers of Canada or wherever. But we are told that this sort of 'raft' is 'an alteration of an earlier 'raff''. But the only raff we are conversationally familiar with is the 'riff' raff'. Afficionados of traditional jazz will recognise a riff when they hear one, but that hardly helps us understand why riff-raff means what it does. But with a little lexicographical help we can learn that riff-raff derives from French idiom 'rif et raf'', meaning 'pieces of plunder of small value' (from Fr verbs rifler and raffler, meaning to steal and to snatch respectively).

Baffled, we return, then, to the plain raff. Here the Encarta dictionary can't help us. But the Shorter Oxford English one tries to. There are three entries for 'raff'; first, a noun originating in Middle English signifying 'a class of people or things' (not very helpful, though delicately hinting at the term riff-raff, perhaps); next another noun, perhaps derived from German Rafe and meaning 'foreign timber' (less helpful); and lastly a verb meaning 'to sweep together'. By straining the imagination very hard, we might be able to see a connection between the German timber, our raft of floating logs and the notion of 'sweeping together'.

So we turn to the SOED's interpretation of the word raft, and there we find (first) 'a piece of timber'; secondly, our floating logs; third, logs tied together to form the sort of raft that ship-wrecked mariners used to knock together; fourth, a 'foundation made of reinforced concrete' (obviously deriving from the mariners' raft); and lastly, 'a lot of' anything - this last usage being, it is suggested, a variation of the puzzling 'raff''. Cheap, rubbishy stuff swept together, may be: but 'rafts of legislation' ? - not a very flattering estimate of the laws and regulations we live under.

But I can't help feeling that some semantic connection may still be missing.

Riffs, raffs and rafts