Prurience?

[A. Maberry]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Bill Smith wrote:
>
> I was going to suggest that you reply to me personally, but, given the
> prurience of this list, you may want to reply to everyone.

I must say that I take exception to this. The Amaerican Dialect Society
list, by my understanding, deals with American speech, and as such is no
more prurient than than American speech itself--unless of course, you are
using it in Taylor's sense as quoted in the OED, "An irresistible
prurience asking for the marvelous."

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu