lox (smoked salmon) from 1668??

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Sat Aug 5 00:20:18 UTC 2006


Doug is undoubtedly correct, yet OED does not enter the 17th C. _lox_ as a variant spelling of _lax_.

  _Lax_  in English must have been pronounced with more or less the vowel of "hat" from the very beginning; OE spellings demonstrate this. But the form _lox_ in 1668, if accurately transcribed, would indicate something rather different, perhaps ignorantly influenced by the unrelated _lock_, "a contrivance for fastening."

  JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: lox (smoked salmon) from 1668??
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>"1668 Cleveland's Old Gill ii, Her Breath smells like Lox, Or unwiped Nocks."
>
>Is this lox n.2, a kind of smoked salmon, first citation 1941??

Probably not exactly. But I think it might could be lax n.1, basically the
same word, first citation some time before the Deluge. There is an example
in SND from 1819 spelled with an "o".

-- Doug Wilson


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/409 - Release Date: 8/4/2006

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list