Olly olly oxen free

Olly olly oxen free (and variants: ollie ollie umphrey, olly-olly-ee, outtie outtie lets be free, olly-olly-oxen-tree, all-y all-y all set free, Ollie Ollie in come free, ally alley ocean free, etc.) is a catchphrase used in such children's games as hide and seek, capture the flag or kick the can to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that the position of the sides in a game has changed (as in which side is in the field or which side is at bat or "up" in baseball or kickball), or, alternatively, that the game is entirely over. Cassidy and Hall write that the phrase may be derived from "All ye, all ye 'outs' in free," "All the outs in free" or possibly "Calling all the 'outs' in free;" in other words: all who are "out" may come in without penalty. Various calls used for such purposes have gone by the collective name of "ollyoxalls" in some places. Tukey and Rowell speculate that the phrase may be a corruption of a hypothetical and ungrammatical German origin phrase "Alle, Alle, auch sind frei" (English: Everyone everyone, is also free).