"A-loose" redux

[Jonathan Lighter]

Ever construed with "ever whichaway" ?

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: "A-loose" redux
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Has anyone else noted the new Dr. Pepper commercial in which
the R&B singer, Joseph "Joe Tex" Arrington, a native of Rogers, TX,
sings

"Don't turn it a-loose!"?

For those who missed the beginning, a friend who's a native of
Vermont once pointed out to me that "a-loose" is non-standard.
I was surprised and annoyed, to the extent that I checked just
about every dictionary and manual of usage known to man in
order to prove him wrong. Needless to say, I failed.

The point here is that Dr. Pepper is headquartered in Texas and
"Joe Tex" and I are both natives of Texas. So, for us Texans,
"a-loose" is as good as standard. ;-)

The usual pronunciation of Joe Tex is Joe _Tek_, a nice example
of the dropping of final /s/ in BE.

-Wilson

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