"floppy disk"--why "floppy"?

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:31 PM -0400 5/10/01, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>Or [di SHET] in southern dialects (of Italy, that is). Please add a
>little garlic to mine, but hold it for larry if he says so.
>
>dInIs
>

Hold the garlic?  Perish the thought!  Extra garlic, and crushed red
pepper if you don't mind.

>
>
>
>>At 12:04 PM -0400 5/10/01, James A. Landau wrote:
>>>
>>>     One more item:  for quite some time it was unsettled whether the proper
>>>spelling was "disk drive" or "disc drive".  "Disk" won out, perhaps because
>>>"discette" is not a plausible spelling.
>>>
>>Well, it depends what you're spelling.  Maybe it's just that it's
>>lunchtime, but for me this conjures up some tasty round pasta forms,
>>pronounced of course [di SHET te].  A little freshly grated parmesan
>>on mine, please.
>>
>>larry
>
>--
>Dennis R. Preston
>Department of Linguistics and Languages
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
>preston at pilot.msu.edu
>Office: (517)353-0740
>Fax: (517)432-2736