Being pendantic

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 09:07:58 -0400, David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET> wrote:

>In the thread "cubic VVV", "Mullins, Bill" wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>> </pendant off>
>
>Google gives ~21,300 hits for "pendantic", many clearly in place of
>"pedantic". Is it really possible to be properly pedantic while writing
>pendantic, i wonder?

On the alt.folklore.urban newsfroup, "pendant"/"pendantic"/"pendantry" is
an intentional mipselling, used as an in-group shibboleth to maintain
their borders from perpetual onslaughts of clue-deprived newbies. A good
sociolinguistic study of these shibboleths by Lara Hopkins used to be
online, but it's disappeared. AFU does provide some guidance on its
official site, though: <http://tafkac.org/afu/guides/afu_language.html>.


--Ben Zimmer