New use of "unless"?

[Herb Stahlke]

This, I think, is where the variant "least" comes in.  I do hear
things like

I have to get home early least I get in trouble.

While not common, I hear it enough to believe that it's active in
local speech.  It may, of course, be a hypercorrection or a case
of dental paragoge.

Herb

>>> douglas at NB.NET 01/23/01 02:01PM >>>
L. Horn:

>... I think it's more likely that ... "unlest" is related
(phonologically)
>to "acrosst" and
>"oncet". ....

Web search provides a number of modern instances of "unlest";
they all seem
to = "unless".

Is the standard word "lest" heard (outside 'fixed expressions')
in casual
speech anywhere? If so, one might expect it to become confused
with
"unless", which has reasonably common spoken versions "unlest"
and "'less".
For example, if my great-uncle from Dogpatch used "lest" in its
standard
sense in casual conversation when I was young, I might have
misinterpreted
it and adopted it as "unless"/"unlest" in the same sense in my
speech.

-- Doug Wilson