[Ads-l] thoughts on "stacking"/"packing"/"stocking" cards

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Sun Aug 23 13:50:26 UTC 2015


On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
[snip]
> Historians seem split on whether Randolph said "stacked" or "packed."
> But if there is no reference to him saying "packed" before the 1906
> publication of Margaret Bayard Smith's correspondence, then I think
> it's quite plausible that "packed" was the historically accurate word,
> which got changed in 1906 to "stacked" due to an error (or intentional
> improvement?) in the transcribing and editing.
[snip]

The second sentence above should of course read "But if there is no
reference to him saying 'stacked'..." (not "packed").

--bgz

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