Status

[Peter Richardson]

I'm with Larry. "Potty-o" for patio sounds raw-ther pretentious to me (b.
1943, native speaker of northern Illinois-ese).>

Peter R.

> I (b. 1945) can't recall ever hearing anything OTHER than /ae/ for the
> stressed vowel in "patio" in New York, California, or Wisconsin.  And I'm
> sure I would have registered someone saying what would have been processed
> as "potty-o", with the a-as-in-"father".  Could there in fact have been
> some modicum of taboo avoidance involved in the posited mid-century shift?
>
> Larry
>