A new (to me, IAC) spelling rule

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:23 PM -0400 8/31/10, Ann Burlingham wrote:
>On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      A new (to me, IAC) spelling rule
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  I may be AFU, here, but it seems to me that there is simply no reason
>>  on earth to sit around making up this kind of nonsense and then
>>  foisting it off on the polloi as an actual rule that they have to
>>  adhere to, lest they be considered only hemi-semi-literate.
>>
>>  One of several letters to the NYT more or less making the same empty -
>>  IMO, IAC - claim:
>>
>>  "Bed bugs is TWO words - not one. The general rule [WTF?! If there is
>>  such a rule, why wasn't I taught it at any time between 1942, when I
>>  entered grade school, and 1954, when I (was) graduated (from) high
>>  school?] for writing out common names of insects is as follows. If the
>>  insect name is a misnomer (e.g., the dragonfly is NOT a fly and
>>  neither is a damselfly), then the whole name is written as one word.
>>  If it is not a misnomer, then it is written as two words (e.g., house
>>  fly, which is a real fly [GB: Samuelson, James. ... The Common
>>  _Housefly_. 2nd ed. London, 1860]). The bed bug is a "true" bug and
>  > therefore is two words."
>
I wonder how far the rule extends.  Some interesting consequences of
the appropriately generalized version:  While peanut butter is real
butter, phone sex is "true" sex, and a think tank is an actual tank,
your chairperson turns out not to be an actual person.

LH

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