"just one letter away"

[Laurence Horn]

Unless I missed it, nobody has yet mentioned "traduttore -
traditore".  Not sure if it counts as just one letter away or just
two.

LH

At 6:14 PM +0000 9/22/10, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>The Roman playwright Plautus in _Rudens_ (5.2.17-19), on a
>mendacious medical man:
>
>Gripus:  . . . Quid tu?  Num medicus, quaeso, es?
>Labrax:  Immo edepol una litera plus sum quam medica.
>Gripus:      Tum tu / Mendicus es?
>
>The "medicus"/"mendicus" wordplay has also come from the pen of Sir
>Thomas More (1518), Thomas Nash (1599), and John Owen (1606).
>
>English epigrams from the 16th and 17th centuries feature the
>difference of one letter (or so) between "lawyer" and "liar."  And
>the motif is probably implicit (at least) in the venerable
>"womb"/"tomb" parallel.
>
>--Charlie
>
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
>Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 1:20 PM
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Ah, but the economy and implied "logic" of being "just one letter away"
>seems to be missing. The recent examples imply not  just "related" but
>"virtually indistinguishable."
>
>JL
>

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