Dating of "mud flap"?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Jul 12 19:09:33 UTC 2005


>Thank you, AM.  (The painter is not PPRuben or even PPRubin.)

No, he's Rubens.  But what follows from that?  Would you insist on
"monstrousity" rather than "monstrosity" because, after all, it's the
quality of being monstrous, not montros?  If so, shouldn't we also
require "monsterous" rather than "montstrous"?  And hence
"monsterousity"?  What distinguishes this case from others in which
readjustment rules apply in word-formation, e.g. "Shavian" and, yes,
"Rubenesque"?  Do you insist on "Platoic" rather than "Platonic" on
the grounds that we (in English) don't call him Platon?  Saying that
the painter's name is "Rubens" is true but not necessarily sufficient.

L

>At 7/12/2005 12:03 PM, you wrote:
>>Well, yeah, since you mention it, "Rubensesque," which ain't that hard to
>>say, does call PPRubens to mind more readily than Rubenesque, which sounds
>>more like corned-beef-&-sauerkraut (even though spelled differently)!
>>AM



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