A new (to me, IAC) spelling rule

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Sep 1 02:48:44 UTC 2010


At 7:12 PM -0700 8/31/10, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/the-curious-world-of-bedbug-research/?apage=1#comments
>
>[comment #19]
>
>I understand that entymologists

Interesting orthographic blend

>refer to them as bed bugs (2 words) not bedbugs, as the author of
>this article uses. Apparently if the animal is an actual bug, it
>should be 2 words. Dragonfly is an example of an insect that is not
>really a fly, so they merge it into one word.
>
Can I be the first to suggest that this constitutes an instance of
folk entomology?

LH

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