Re: USAGE: Verse, was: Re: Thorn vs Eth

Tristan wrote:


>On Thu, 2002-07-11 at 13:52, Roger Mills wrote:
>> Presumably, "verse" < versus, though how or why GOK....
>> No-one seems to have suggested these.....or am I stating the
>> obvious........?
>I actually mentioned 'verse' < 'versus' in my initial post on the
>matter.
Apologies; I must have skimmed over that.

>And the how and why is clear: /v8:s@z/ sounds like
>/v8:s/+/{s,z,@z}/.
Well yes, presumably that's what the small children think they hear when
their parents or the TV are talking about "Miami versus Dallas", "Brazil
versus Korea" etc. etc.-- the most likely context nowadays. And clearly they
have analogized the verbal meaning "X _plays against_ Y", versus the
original meaning, simply "against, in opposition to".

 However, in all my roughly 25,000 days I've never heard it pronounced with
final /z/, as if it were "verses"; the final /s/ is always voiceless, even
from dum-dum sports commentators (amazingly).  Aside from academese (it's
one of my favorite words), about the only other frequent context is
discussions of legal matters-- "Kramer versus Kramer" e.g. (I forget-- did
that movie title use the full word or "vs." or "v."?) or (hopefully) "United
States v. Enron" (as it is abbreviated nowadays, for reasons unknown to me).

Curiously, newsreaders for the past 15 years or so have been referring to
such cases as "United States _vee_ Enron"-- to save a syllable's worth of
breath, I guess. Prior to that, it was "versus", and IIRC, was abbreviated
"vs." in court papers.

Sorry to rant, but I do after all qualify for curmudgeonhood, and have
always been a bit of a language snob. :-)))

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