Thomas Edison, how could you?

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 8/22/02 12:14:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
mam at THEWORLD.COM writes:

> On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>
>  #A nit: Why isn't it the "New Joisey Toinpike"?

Because "Joisey" is a regionalism, but "turnpikes" exist in all major USA
dialect regions.  Or to paraphrase Ogden Nash
      I am a patient man, and when I paint pictures of boats I leave no stern
untoned
      I am a thorough man, and when I throw rocks at birds and other
phoneticians I leave no turnpike unstoned.


>  Driving down to Philadelphia the other week from Massachusetts, I was
>  massively confused and led astray by a road sign on the Garden State
>  that indicated a turn for <icon that looked like a diagram of the human
>  bowels>, with no text attached. It could be a stylized "M" with an
>  outline map of NJ inside it in white. I thought it was for the NJTP, but
>  it wasn't.

New Jersey highway markers are a herald's nightmare, but I cannot identify
the sign you describe.  If you were "on the Garden State" (which locally
means "on the Garden State Parkway") then you were already lost, since the
Garden State Parkway does not get within 80 km of Philadelphia.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------

Now for a serious question.  English has a number of nouns that consist of
verb+direct object, e.g. turnpike (the toll collector, once you have paid,
turns the pike barring the road so that you may proceed), cutthroat,
pickpocket, turncoat, turnkey, pinchpenny, cutpurse or snatchpurse.  This
seems a very productive means of generating new nouns, but all the ones I
listed go back to Georgian times or earlier.  Does anyone know why this
particular means of word formation has been abandoned in English?

And is it significant that most of the ones I cited refer to criminals?  Is
this technique peculiar to English criminal argot of a certain period?

Joanne "J. K." Rowlings used this technique in "The Prisoner of Azkaban" to
generate the name for a bus driver: "Stan Shunpike".  The name was effective
at least partly because of its very archaism.  (It was also descriptive: Mr.
Shunpike avoided the main roads and drove cross-country.)  There was also a
Civil War cavalry commander named Kilpatrick who became known as
"Kill-cavalry".


         - James A. Landau