New thread--a curious thing

[Arnold Zwicky]

bob haas asks about exclamatory YIPES vs. YIKES.  as bob reports, AHD3
has only YIPE/YIPES; ditto WNI3; RHDEL has only YIPE; wentworth &
flexner has none of the variants.  on the british side, OED2 and the
1998 chambers have only YIKE/YIKES; ayto & simpson has only YIKES; the
Collins Cobuild has none of them.

so the dictionaries - at least, the ones i have within a few feet
of my computer - line up as american P vs. british K (insofar as
they have entries at all).  this is odd, since haas and zwicky,
both americans, are definitely in the K camp.

is there actually a general british/american divide here (with a
few exceptional speakers, like bob and me), or is this some artefact
of dictionary construction?

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)