Re: muzzies

Quoting tristan alexander mcleay <zsau@...>:

> > I was at an ladies expat brunch one day, and we were
> > talking about weather and aircon and things of that
> > sort, and one lady (from England, somewhere near
> > London I believe, who had lived in Saudi Arabia for
> > some years) started talking about how the "muzzies"
> > get into the houses through the cracks in the windows.
> >  Well, I didn't know what "muzzies" were, so I asked
> > and found out that they were mosquitoes.  Now, I
> > thought it was interesting that the lady from Scotland
> > sitting beside me didn't know what "muzzies" were
> > either.  Is this 1.  An affectionate term for
> > mosquitoes that only English people in Saudi Arabia
> > use or 2.  a term belonging to only a certain dialect
> > of England or 3.  Just a word that this one lady
> > happened to know but we didn't?
>
> Well, I've never heard `muzzie', but in Australia, we say `mozzie' for
> mosquito.
In Texas, the dialectal term for "mosquito" is "skeeter",
either [skid@] or [skidr=]. (Since final /o/ in Texan shifts to
schwa, the first of those two has transparently just lost its
first syllable.)

It is, without question, *not* affectionate.  We have horrible
mosquitos in Texas. This summer, when a tropical storm sat on
Houston for about a week, it allowed 100 million mosquitos to
hatch - *not* a fun experience.

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
that within that society (however defined) all men have equal rights,
then the odds are that his views, sooner rather than later, are going
to set something or someone on fire." Peter Green, in _From Alexander
to Actium_, on Spartan king Cleomenes III

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