Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

Joe wrote:

>Biro means a ballpoint pen.  Particularly ones made of clear plastic.  I
>think someone called Biro was the inventor of the ballpoint pen.
>
>
Seeing as fountain pens are always fountain pens and felt-tip pens are
always textas (or texters because they sound the same here) unless
you're talking to a NZer when they may be felt-tip pens, one starts
running out of things to call pens. The cheaper the pen the more likely
it is to be called a biro, but I wouldn't've excluded ones made out of
non-clear plastic simply because they're made of non-clear plastic.
Indeed, my (~3.50 AUD, which is expensive for a pen) pen would be
described as a biro if 'pen' was presently being ambiguous.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

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