Pittsburgh and gray/gray

[Rudolph C Troike]

I shouldn't mix these, but to respond to Patti Kurz, the first thing to do
is log onto your local library system and see if the Modern Language
Association (MLA) Bibliography is available online; if not, hie to the
library and look at it year by year in the paper version (or they may have
a CD-ROM version installed on site).
        On grey/gray, although I know the source of the orthographic
difference, I've often idiosyncratically associated "grey" with a lighter
tone and "gray" with a darker tone. I suspect, as someone suggested, that
if you did a search of catalog(ue)s of various sorts, you would find a
preference for "grey" for automobile colors and colors of women's clothes,
and for "gray" for paint and less fashionable things. In other words, as
Ron Butters succinctly put it, to some extent the distinction does have a
cultural reality somewhat paralleling "theatre" and "theater". In short,
I think the question can be answered empirically.
        History does show that orthographic differences can become
attached to semantic differences, when the latter are there be associated
with, or manufactured after the fact, "flour"/"flower" being a prime
example.

        Rudy