Re: most looked-up words

And Rosta scripsit:

> I was embracing American English, which, as others have pointed out,
> has become /'kudouz/, an apparent plural, in contrast to the older
> (& still BrE) mass noun /'kju:dQs/ (hence presumably the name of the
> OS Bill Gates bought, QDOS, "quick & dirty operating system", and
> renamed in the characteristically banal way one would expect from
> that stronzaccione).
I very much doubt this etymology of QDOS; AFAIK the current American
pronunciation is older than 1980.  But I make no claim for the etymology
of Sinclair QDOS, which is at least British and may well be a pun on "kudos".

--
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  jcowan@reutershealth.com
SAXParserFactory [is] a hideous, evil monstrosity of a class that should
be hung, shot, beheaded, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake,
buried in unconsecrated ground, dug up, cremated, and the ashes tossed
in the Tiber while the complete cast of Wicked sings "Ding dong, the
witch is dead."  --Elliotte Rusty Harold on xml-dev