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Re: USAGE: turquoise badminton waistcoat (was: Re: USAGE Re:Language revival)

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, December 2, 1999, 16:23
And Rosta wrote:

> So it seems as though I've stumbled on a widespread variant not > documented by any of the dictionaries I've consulted.
AFAIK dictionaries' recording of pronunciations is haphazard, idiosyncratic, and unreliable. Considering that dictionaries are & always have been founded essentially on written quotations, this is no real surprise. With half a million words in the language it is hardly surprising that some of them have no settled pronunciation: Jones and Kenyon&Knott between them record no less than four for "quaff".
> This is a new one on me; I've never noticed anything other than /b&dmIntn/. > I wonder whether it is a reanalysis resulting from certain realization > rules of /ntn/ in American accents, illustrable rather strikingly with > the following example (~ = nasalization; _ = creak)
I think you are clearly correct.
> What do you call them, then? "Vest"? Or does "vest" mean "jacket"? I > forget. (As you know, "singlet" = "vest" (or is that only in Australian?).)
Umm. Here is American men's wear terminology, from the inside out: undershirt: the garment nearest the skin, sometimes in the form of a T-shirt, sometimes in the form with two shoulder straps ("tank tops", though that term is also applied to shirts in this form). shirt: no problem here, I hope. vest: the armless garment now normally worn only in formal circumstances as part of a "three-piece suit" (jacket, vest, trousers) jacket: the outermost garment. If not part of a suit, it may be called a "sports jacket". This word is also applied to cold-weather gear that does not extend below the waist; if it extends below the waist, it is a "coat". underpants: the inner garment for the lower half. pants: the outer garment for the lower half.
> As so often happens when I seek to have a clue about what you were on > about, my meagre erudition let me down still clueless & I had to ask my > spouse.
The purpose of spice (pl. of "spouse"), verdad?
> From her explanation it sounded like you skewered him on half > a dozen levels; but had I been the skeweree, the pertransition of the > skewerings would have been too subtle for me to be sensible of them.
I fear that he also was insensible. Ah well: one of the few times in my life where I come up with le mot juste at once, rather than as l'esprit de l'escalier (taken after leaving the scene, I suppose), and my interlocutor doesn't get it! -- Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@...> Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com Den er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)