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<div>At 1:32 PM -0400 8/31/00, Frank Abate wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>You should check DARE (which I don't
have handy).</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>This would take us through at least the mid-term election of the
Gore-Lieberman administration, if any. The last DARE volume
ends at O. </div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
I would call "package store" a pure regionalism, and
reflective (as Lynne M<br>
said) of Lieberman's CT origin. He may not have realized he was
using a</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>regionalism, as it is the natural and
expected term in his dialect area.<br>
</blockquote>
<div>Right, and if I'm not mistaken we had a discussion of
"packy" or "packie" a couple of years ago, with
Lynne one of the contributors. Ah, here it is (some of it,
anyway); it was back in '96--so twentieth century.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>--Larry</div>
<div>=================</div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Date:
Wed, 8 May 1996 06:55:56 -0400</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Sender: American
Dialect Society <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">From:
"M. Lynne Murphy"
<104LYN@MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Subject: Re: packy?<br>
To:
Multiple recipients of list ADS-L <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
<br>
> Late that next afternoon, I found Det. Lt. Royce Whitlock of the
state police<br>
> where he usually went for lunch on his days off: downstairs in
the basement<br>
> of a thriving cement-block mini-mall in Lynnfield--convenience
store selling<br>
> milk, cigarettes, potato chips, and lottery scratch cards and
keno tickets<br>
> that kept a bunch of older guys in satin jackets rapt in front
of a TV<br>
> screen; two-chair barber shop; sewing supplies store; packy; and
a take-out<br>
> sandwich shop.<br>
> --George V. Higgins, Sandra Nichols Found Dead. New
York: Henry Holt,1996<br>
<br>
a packy, in most of massachusetts (that i know of), is a liquor<br>
store. more formally, a 'package store'. (this has
something to do<br>
w/ liquor selling laws in massachusetts, but i don't know what.)<br>
don't know if it's spread to other parts of new england.<br>
<br>
_packy_ was definitely the most dominant term for liquor store
in<br>
western mass when i lived there in the early-mid 80s. (i spent
most<br>
of my time there in a umass dorm, so the packy was a frequent topic
of</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">conversation.) a
"packy run" is a trip to the liquor store (to stock up).<br>
<br>
cheers,<br>
lynne<br>
</font>=================</div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Date:
Thu, 9 May 1996 08:41:37 EDT<br>
Reply-To: American Dialect Society
<ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
Sender: American Dialect Society
<ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
From: Larry Horn
<LHORN@YaleVM.CIS.Yale.Edu><br>
Organization: Yale University<br>
Subject: Re: packy?</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000"
>To:
Multiple recipients of list ADS-L
<ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">To support Alice [Faber?]'s
intuition, I can confirm that 'package store' is standard here but
'packy' inextant. Of course, it's hard to know that a form
REALLY doesn't occur, but I've never encountered it in 15 years in
the same South-Central Connecticut regional area as
Alice's. I also don't remember 'packy' from a couple of
years spent in Mass. in the '70's, but I do recall that</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">'package store' is somehow
MORE standard there than here, although here it's<br>
used interchangeably with liquor store. People I know always opt for
the latter<br>
unregional variant. Of course not all liquor stores are
package stores:</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">Warehouse Liquors, Liquor
Land, etc.--the ones that are more like supermarkets --are not
package stores (much less packies). Oh, if you were wondering,
we don't call them 'lickies' either.<br>
<br>
Larry</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">=========================================<span
></span
>===================Date: <span
></span> Thu, 9 May 1996 09:21:52 -0400</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Sender: American
Dialect Society <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">From:
"M. Lynne Murphy"
<104LYN@MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Subject: Re:
packy?</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">well, either
"packy" is a later development, or maybe it's college<br>
slang rather than general usage. i swear, when i lived there,
nobody<br>
i knew used "package store" in normal conversations.
maybe we were<br>
more affectionate toward the package store (and its contents and<br>
services) than average bay staters.<br>
<br>
lynne</font></div>
<div>=================</div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Date:
Thu, 6 Jun 1996 23:40:47 -0400<br>
Reply-To: American Dialect Society
<ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Sender: American
Dialect Society <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
From: ALICE FABER
<faber@HASKINS.YALE.EDU><br>
Subject: Packy revisited<br>
To:
Multiple recipients of list ADS-L <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">A few weeks ago, there was
some discussion on the list about the term "packy" for a
liquor store. As per recollections by Lynn Murphy, this seems to be a
Massachusetts term, especially Western Massachusetts (which starts,
as far as I can tell, at Worcester, in other words, comprising the
western 3/4 of the state, but that's another thread). Based on some
other folks' unfamiliarity<br>
with the term, Lynn had speculated that this might be a more
"college-y" term.<br>
At that time, I had volunteered to commission my sister to
investigate among<br>
her colleagues. This evening I received her report (along with a
request for<br>
other instances of regional variation in preposition usage along side
"wait on<br>
line" vs "wait in line", to which I could only add
"sick to/at/in one's<br>
stomach"). Her colleagues, from Enfield and Windsor, CT
(essentially, just<br>
south of the Mass/CT border) can't imagine calling a liquor store
anything<br>
other than a "packy"; my sister, as a non-drinker, had
never encountered the<br>
term before I commissioned her. These colleagues are 20-something
to<br>
30-something, not all college educated...<br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">Alice Faber</font></div>
<div>=================</div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Date:
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 09:59:47 -0700</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Sender: American
Dialect Society <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
From: David
Goldstein-Shirley <dsgoldst@EA.OAC.UCI.EDU><br>
Subject: Re: Packy
revisited</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000"
>To:
Multiple recipients of list ADS-L
<ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000"> <br>
Although I was subscribed to this list by someone else and have
been<br>
trying unsuccessfully for some time to be unsubscribed (if the
listowner<br>
is reading, would you please unsubscribe me?), I do have a
response<br>
regarding the term "packy" for a liquor store.<br>
<br>
Is it possible that it refers to the ownership of many liquor stores
by<br>
Pakistanis? I wouldn't be surprised if it is a British slang
term.<br>
<br>
David Goldstein-Shirley<br>
University of California, Irvine</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">=================</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Date:
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 14:10:39 -0400</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Sender: American
Dialect Society <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
From: Margaret Ronkin
<ronkinm@GUSUN.GEORGETOWN.EDU><br>
Subject: Re: Packy
revisited</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000"
>To:
Multiple recipients of list ADS-L
<ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000"> <br>
I too thought of your
interpretation, but I felt that it<br>
was unlikely in the context in which 'packy' was used on this
list.<br>
<br>
Also, the British
abbreviation of 'Pakistani' is 'paki'<br>
or 'pakki', which came into use in the skinhead era/late 60s.<br>
Tony Thorne's _Dictionary of Contemporary Slang_ (1990) gives
three<br>
senses of this shortening: (1) "an offensive racial
epithet"; (2)<br>
"a descriptive term for the many independent corner stores
owned<br>
and run by (South Asian) immigrant families", and (3) (still
awake?)<br>
"commercial or low-grade (South Asian) hashish... as opposed
to<br>
premimium products from Afghanistan, Kashmir, Nepal, etc.".<br>
<br>
I think it's unlikely that
'paki'/'packy' in the second sense<br>
refers to "the ownership of many liquor stores by
Pakistanis".<br>
Pakistani expats may be branching into the liquor business, but<br>
Pakistan is an Islamic republic (in which only
"non-Muslims" and<br>
"foreigners" can legally obtain liquor) and, I think, many
if not most<br>
expats would still try to uphold community values, at least in<br>
public.<br>
<br>
<br>
- Maggie Ronkin<br>
=======================</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Date:
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 22:21:00 EDT</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Sender: American
Dialect Society <ADS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU><br>
From: Larry Horn
<LHORN@YaleVM.CIS.Yale.Edu><br>
Organization: Yale University</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">Subject: Re: Packy
revisited</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000"> <br>
Especially unlikely in the context of the use under discussion, given
the<br>
relative paucity of Pakistani-owned liquor stores in Western
Massachusetts.<br>
As we seem to have determined from the earlier discussion of the
range of<br>
these items, the distribution of "packy" is a subset of
that of "package<br>
store", which extends through much of (southern and central?)
New England.<br>
Thus there are proportionately far more "packies" along the
Connecticut River</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000">valley and adjacent areas of
Massachusetts than in New Haven or Boston, but<br>
as far as I know no such disparity can be observed in the
distribution of<br>
Pakistanis.<br>
(Oh, and doo-wop music wasn't originated by Italians either.)<br>
<br>
Larry</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva"
color="#000000">========================</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
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