Austracism

[Peter A. McGraw]

It's precisely your (and my) differentiation of the two sounds that makes
this a pun.  If you merged the two vowels, it wouldn't be a pun for
you--just a new instance of homophony.  Or maybe it would be what might be
called an "orthographic pun."  (Is there a word for that?  Here we go
again....)

Anyway, thanks for answering my question.

Peter Mc.

--On Wed, Feb 9, 2000 4:09 PM -0700 David Bowie <db.list at BYU.EDU> wrote:

> so it seems to be a pun on
> "ostracism".
>
> Of course, i don't merge "cot" and "caught", so it's not a perfect pun to
> my ears...



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                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu