[Ads-l] -hootered

[Ben Zimmer]

On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> On May 13, 2016, at 1:33 PM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:
>>
>> I can imagine "eyed", "legged", "haired", etc. in descriptions of various kinds of
>> animals.  E.g., apods are not "legged" but pods are.
>>
> Maybe so.  But why do we resist describing people that way?  It's not just the
> informational content or the unmarkedness.  I could imagine describing someone
> as "one-nosed Henry" in a context in which his brothers are all two-nosed (there's
> a song I'm thinking of called "One-Ball Reilly") but not as "nosed Henry".

Reminds me of the Monty Python bit with the man with two noses
(because the man with three noses didn't show up).

https://youtu.be/9hkToXrM7vg?t=8m40s

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org