"hybread"

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

Larry Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

>>>
At 6:57 PM -0500 11/21/99, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>    [...]
>   The Atlanta Journal and Constitution (1997) and the Des Moines Register
>(1998) also show restaurants that serve "pitza," but "pitza" appears to
>come straight outta Brooklyn.

What's interesting is that this is a vacuous blend in the spoken language,
given the homophony of "pitza" and "pizza".  At least "hybread" is a real,
God-fearing blend phonologically as well as orthographically.
<<<

What's also odd about "hybread" is that I've heard "hybrid" pronounced that way,
/'haI.brEd/, by different (and diverse) people in a number of places over a long
span of years. My guess is that it's from a folk etymology, as if "high-bred",
trying to analyze an opaque expression by recruiting the past participle of
"breed" (as in "cross-breed").

-- Mark