Niagara Falls = "Niffles"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I should have glossed that. Col. Edward M. House was Wilson's closest political and diplomatic advisor during and immediately after World War I.

  JL

"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: Re: Niagara Falls = "Niffles"
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JL quotes a 1929 letter to Time Magazine:
>>

During the War it was an Englishman who said the Americans were worse than
the English in the difference between spelling and pronunciation. "You spell
it W-i-l-s-o-n and pronounce it 'House,'" he remarked.

<<

Is that a reference to US politics? (Wilson was President during World War
I.) If not, I don't get it at all.

m a m

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