Re: USAGE: subway

Tristan scripsit:

> Okay, thanks. Why would you call something aboveground a subway, though?
For the same reason we call certain flightless critters "birds"; the
definition of "subway" is prototype-based.

> Sorry, you've lost me. 'City limits' to me would refer to the far outer
> limits of the city i.e. those places where when cross the road, on one
> side your in a suburb and on the other you're in the country or the
> bush.
By "city limits" I mean the legal limit of the city proper, outside which
are to be found the suburbs.

> > Poms
>
> Do Americans use that word too?
No.

Pom < pommy < pomegranate < jimmygrant < immigrant, if you're curious.

> > and the Aussies have kept almost all of those changes (even if you
> > did have the good sense to adopt the dollar as your currency unit)
>
> And use real measurements.
Yeah, that *is* a win, along with fork in left hand.  I don't claim
We are entirely perfect, y'know.

> Hey, it's very much the same as what we inherited. Just with extra added
> features.
Tell that to Nellie Melba.  (Except she's dead.)

> Above-ground *sub*ways?
No system *entirely* above ground would be called a subway, to be sure,
and the Philadelphia tram system, which runs partly underground, is
sensibly known as the Subway-Surface system (at least officially;
real Fuluffyans call it the trolley).

> Really? A Google search for 'labour -labor site:.ca' and 'labor -labour
> site:.ca' has 555 000 hits vs 77 000 (~7.2:1); using cent(re|er), you
> get 1 890 000 to 429 000, about 4.4:1. (I would do searches of
> particular words that got changed on their ownsome, rather than word
> classes, but I can't think of any but grey, cheque and tyre, and they
> all have associated problems.)
Canadian spelling is a mixture of U.S. and Commonwealth conventions, as
illustrated by "tire centre" (U.S. "tire center"; elsewhere, "tyre centre").

> Oh, I never said otherwise. People can be entirely too annoying at times.
> And I'd rather you be the International Police who can Never Do Anything
> Right.
The Keystone Kops, to be exact (another Philadelphia invention).

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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