[Ads-l] Heard: "allege" > _allegate_

[James A. Landau]

I just spent the weekend in Toronto, Ontario.  My host at one point said, "It is getting too expensive to extricate oil from the Alberta tar sands."  He is a native of Toronto and except for a few years in Boston and upstate New York has lived in Toronto all his life.

The Pentagon, despite being a seven-story building, has exactly one escalator.  It broke down and was out of service for a while.  A poem was posted anonymously on the escalator.  The last three lines read:
    They'll fix it somehow
    Though you can't escale now
    Still you can escalator!

(The same anonymous poet also wrote:
    It was rickety
    It was rackety
    It went clickety-clackety
    Its gears were really a mess
    The engineers say it will run
    Going upstairs again will be fun
    With the help of JC
    Or it it JCS?)

Different topic:  My host also said "She took the 401 to the 402".  I thought the use of the definite article before a highway number was strictly a Southern California usage, but apparently it exists in Ontario.  I asked my host and he said that while street names did not take the article (never "the Bathurst Street"), it was common for highway names to take the article (e.g. "the Yorkdale Road").

- Jim Landau

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