"mores" with silent E

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Aug 3 14:53:29 UTC 2010


At 10:16 AM -0400 8/3/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 8/3/2010 08:19 AM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>>Damien's closing "oh, tempura! Oh, morays!" reminded me that some
>>time last week on NPR, I heard someone  mention the mores of
>>society, pronounced to rhyme with "pores".
>
>I think it was Jon Lighter who wrote that.  It was clearly an
>allusion to the Japanese gustatory delight with eel.
>
>
Besides nimbly distinguishing the target from those notorious social
morays (11,600 google hits), I'd like to think that the monosyllabic
pronunciation may be a reconstruction from "some-mores".

LH

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