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stamps were brown in color and known as "brown stamps" or "brown points". The relationship between a purchase and the collection of these "brown points" equated with doing a good thing (supporting the local vendor) and getting a bonus (the valuable stamps). Purportedly, the collection of these "brownie points" eventually evolved into the modern usage. The term
Browniepoints is still used as a marketing practice in business today by a New Zealand power company and also used by a gift service.
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A popular marketing practice employed by many stores in post-World War II US was the distribution of stamps with each purchase. The number of stamps given out varied with the amount of the purchase. These stamps were collected by customers and later redeemed for household gifts. The earliest of these
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Another proposed etymology is that the term derives from the name of a 19th-century
American railroad superintendent, George R. Brown who, in 1886, devised what was then an innovative system of merits and demerits for railroad employees on the Fall Brook Railway in New York state. Accounts of his
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system were published in railroad journals, and adopted by many leading U.S. railroads. American railroad employees soon began referring colloquially to "brownie points", and at some point, the term entered the general vocabulary.
112:, consisting of green and brown vouchers, referred to as "greenies" and "brownies." One brownie was worth five greenies. The greenies and brownies could be redeemed for goods from the company's catalogue.
145:. The term "brownie" in the sense of "brown-noser" was in use in the 1940s. It has been suggested that the term was given impetus through its coincidence with related scatological slang.
165:), but the term is in fact somewhat older. Its frequent appearance in newspapers in the 1950s date back to the earliest known usage in 1951, where a man in the
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Browne, K.J. Norman, "The Brown and Other
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A popular etymology is an allusion to the merit badges or six points earned by
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deeds or earning favor in the eyes of another, often one's spouse.
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speaks of earning favor with his wife in terms of brownie points.
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conjectures that this expression could also have derived from
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dates from 1963 (when it was reported in the journal
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312:"Brownie Points--A New Measure of a Husband"
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273:(London) December 7, 1923, page 715
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299:World Wide Words: Brownie points
235:Genesis Energy loyalty scheme
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255:Browniepoints gift service
64:a kind of mythological elf
374:English words and phrases
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123:Oxford English Dictionary
94:Curtis Publishing Company
45:Conjectures for etymology
27:Imaginary social currency
60:Girl Guides/Girl Scouts
238:Genesis Energy Limited
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369:Fictional currencies
204:Social Credit System
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318:. p. 5
50:Girlguiding
358:Categories
314:. Part 2.
251:"About Us"
215:References
135:sycophants
133:slang for
179:Barnstar
173:See also
143:Brownies
131:military
102:and the
58:(junior
56:Brownies
209:Whuffie
322:30 Jul
184:Egoboo
199:kudos
194:Karma
110:scrip
324:2021
128:U.S.
120:The
39:good
137:, "
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