"The Gay World" in THE NEW YORK SPY (1967)

[A. Maberry]

On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> Or not, as we've recently seen.  But I also wonder about the
> non-etymological part of this claim.  I thought "feygele" (in either
> the literal or metaphorical sense) was always pronounced with the
> initial vowel of "bagel", and I've never seen it transcribed
> "fagele".  In fact, if there was a word pronounced ['faeg at l@] as
> opposed to ['fe:g at l@], I would guess that it was a blend of "fag" and
> "feygele".
>

Feygl rhymes with bagel, a fact that is apparent when seen in Yiddish
orthography: FYYGL, BYYGL, pronounced feygl, beygl respectively.
Weinreich's dictionary gives two forms to render "bird" (der) foygl and
feygl.
Under feygele (from foygl) is the definition "checkmark" and the phrase
"leygn zikh feygelekh in buzem" (lit. put little birds in the bosom) =
"build castles in air"

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu