Re: CHAT: Worse Greek 102 (was: Bad Latin 101)

Matt Pearson scripsit:

> > And a friend of mine coined, or passed along, "wood wose" ( as in "the
> > native wood wose wild") for what the gay world now calls a twink.  The
> > plural was "woodwi" [wUdwij].
>
> I don't get the "wood wose" reference.  Could you explain it?  (I know what a
> twink is.)
"Calling someone a twink is just the gay way of being a male
chauvinist pig."
        --Armistead Maupin (from memory)

Anyhow, it seems clear that this is a mixture of "woodwose" (also spelled
"woodhouse" and "wodehouse", as in P. G. Wodehouse), a wild man of the
woods; and Milton's characterization of Shakespeare's poetry as
his "native wood-notes wild" (in "L'Allegro").

Presumably the use of "woodwose" refers to naivete rather than cuteness.

> Growing up, I had a facetious plural for "toothbrush", namely "toothbreesh".  It
> always seemed reasonable, even though I can't think of any actual irregular
> plurals on that pattern.
My daughter pronounced "tooth" /tuT/ as /tuf@s/ when she was young; this led
to the family plural /tufai/, as in "Go brush your toofi."

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
        --Douglas Hofstadter