CHAT: Macintoshen

Steg Belsky scripsit:

> >     P.S.: Anyone heard of this practice of rendering the plural of
> > Macintosh as Macintoshen?  Who dreamt this up?
>
> Sounds to me like an analogy based on _hamentash_ ~ _hamentashen_.
I think Macintoshen < VAXen < oxen.  There is a hackish tendency to
extend irregularities: we also have boxen as the plural of box in the
sense of "generic Unix/Linux/BSD computer".  On a wider front we
have terms like winnitude and lossitude, which exploit the English
ability to add Romance affixes to Germanic roots, but extending it
to an affix which normally can't do that (unlike re- and -er, e.g.).

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_